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

[PsychoFox]

Both P:K and Deadfire a russian roulette performance-wise. I got lucky with P:K but Deadfire still runs like shit 3 upgades and 3 clean OS installs after.

I wish i was in the same boat as you. I'd much rather be able to play PFKM.

 

[Tigranes]

Multilingual people don't talk like in PoE, but since Americans very rarely are multilingual, it doesn't surprise me they don't know that. It also wouldn't be surprising if none of the people in Obs' writing team speak anything other than English. I know Sawyer speaks German (of course he does), but that wouldn't magically transfer over to the others, even if he is overseeing the writing. Which I don't think he is.

The portrayal in Deadfire seems pretty in character for American media, exaggerated accents and word use is pretty common on TV and film.

It's common in media partly because of the need to convey character quickly. You have an NPC from the army, he's always going to pull "back when I was in the army..." about 10 times more frequently than an actual person would. You have an NPC from Italy, he's going to have a thick Italian accent. (Obviously, accent alone wouldn't work for POE2, unless you invent entire new accents for spoken English, which is even stupider.)

Deadfire struggled to implement it, but not because "oh my god Duc is the worst fucking thing". If you're multilingual, have traveled a lot, and/or know any linguistics and history, then you'd know either (1) Duc was an appropriate actual historical spelling to take, (2) words get mangled and transported all the time, e.g. Japanese still calling bread pan. So why did it turn out so silly?

The real problem is that it gave itself far too many different words, accents, styles, etc. to convey in far too short a time, so they could only do it by going overboard. It's actually the equivalent to the loredumping dialogue problem in POE1. "Oh, we have the Vailians, the Huana, the Rauatai, the Principi, and this character who's a pirate but also from Vailia, so we need like 80 different new words for 5 different accents that every character has to reinforce like crazy..." That was never going to be realistic, and is a form of wrongheaded loredumping.

It's a huge pity, because the nerdy attention to history and linguistics in itself is a great thing; it was nice to actually see reasonable translations of words and accents, as opposed to random made up words some guy copypasted from fantasy books while in the pooper. But the bigger problems POE had with loredumping, and Deadfire's problem trying to implement a chaotic free-for-all high seas of a million factions, also affected this issue.

 

[santino27]

Multilingual people don't talk like in PoE, but since Americans very rarely are multilingual, it doesn't surprise me they don't know that. It also wouldn't be surprising if none of the people in Obs' writing team speak anything other than English. I know Sawyer speaks German (of course he does), but that wouldn't magically transfer over to the others, even if he is overseeing the writing. Which I don't think he is.

The portrayal in Deadfire seems pretty in character for American media, exaggerated accents and word use is pretty common on TV and film.

It's common in media partly because of the need to convey character quickly. You have an NPC from the army, he's always going to pull "back when I was in the army..." about 10 times more frequently than an actual person would. You have an NPC from Italy, he's going to have a thick Italian accent. (Obviously, accent alone wouldn't work for POE2, unless you invent entire new accents for spoken English, which is even stupider.)

Deadfire struggled to implement it, but not because "oh my god Duc is the worst fucking thing". If you're multilingual, have traveled a lot, and/or know any linguistics and history, then you'd know either (1) Duc was an appropriate actual historical spelling to take, (2) words get mangled and transported all the time, e.g. Japanese still calling bread pan. So why did it turn out so silly?

The real problem is that it gave itself far too many different words, accents, styles, etc. to convey in far too short a time, so they could only do it by going overboard. It's actually the equivalent to the loredumping dialogue problem in POE1. "Oh, we have the Vailians, the Huana, the Rauatai, the Principi, and this character who's a pirate but also from Vailia, so we need like 80 different new words for 5 different accents that every character has to reinforce like crazy..." That was never going to be realistic, and is a form of wrongheaded loredumping.

It's a huge pity, because the nerdy attention to history and linguistics in itself is a great thing; it was nice to actually see reasonable translations of words and accents, as opposed to random made up words some guy copypasted from fantasy books while in the pooper. But the bigger problems POE had with loredumping, and Deadfire's problem trying to implement a chaotic free-for-all high seas of a million factions, also affected this issue.

I feel like they should have just used dialect insertion for the natives. Yeah, it's not realistic that the various pillaging/colonizing nations would all speak the same language and accent, but it helps to distinguish the natives-and wouldn't the people being essentially invaded by foreign empires be trying to cling onto the remanants of their own culture?--from their attempted colonizers, and (most importantly) isn't in-your-face annoying every time you meet someone new.

 

[Elephantman]

Deadfire's problem is that their writers are fucking dumb.

I just finished Eder's quest. Turns out, some followers of Eothas are metaphor for religious southern USA cults. They literally drink the Koolaid... They speak in a southern accent...
If this is not cringe/pathetic/dumb/eyeroll-inducing than ekera gelarde. I just cant even...
Its not even a metaphor... its some kind of a stolen idea horribly executed?
You speak with Eders son twice, the second time being trivially talking him down from ritual suicide!
Frankly, he deserved it for having such a name as Bearn.

Nothing in the Deadfire setting makes any sense. Especially the politics.

 

[Lacrymas]

People talk with borrowed words or sentences from other languages when both participants know both languages. I don't use English words when talking to my mother for example, she doesn't speak English, but I do use German words from time to time. I also regularly switch languages with my friends who do speak English. But I never do it like the PoE reptiloids who pretend to be human. Every multilingual person will notice this immediately, it's cringe-y, I'd say even a bit racist and ignorant. It's trying to enjoy the luxury of exoticism without paying for it, if I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

 

[Elephantman]

From what I understand after mashing 1, Ruatai have conquered the Deadfire, by force. The Tribals surrendered or seomthing. Why are Ruatai, a colonial power, that is actively exploiting the new found territory, tolerating the Vallians. Roffles, they have a huge mil oupost in the capital city! Its like the EIC mining gold in a french colony. And the royalty having say in EIC affairs...

 

[Tigranes]

People talk with borrowed words or sentences from other languages when both participants know both languages. I don't use English words when talking to my mother for example, she doesn't speak English, but I do use German words from time to time. I also regularly switch languages with my friends who do speak English. But I never do it like the PoE reptiloids who pretend to be human. Every multilingual person will notice this immediately, it's cringe-y, I'd say even a bit racist and ignorant. It's trying to enjoy the luxury of exoticism without paying for it, if I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

Of course, and that's the same for me.

It might have worked to keep a few iconic and relatively unobtrusive tics - like 'Ac' and 'Ekera' at half the current frequency - and get rid of a lot of the special jargon, and instead focus on showing how the actual political and cultural attitudes of the different folk differ. Focus more on how the Vailians might be more opulent or status-driven, the Rauatai like to trumpet meritocracy, and so on.

The Gullet makes such a great first impression because instead of being bombarded with Fampyrs and Ekeras, you get to see and experience in the very quest structure & map design how the arrival of foreign powers has upended traditional Huana society. And you don't get "oh the natives were so happy before the bad fake Europeans came", more like how it was an extremely discriminatory and problematic society which is breaking apart because the foreigners are upending the basic material/economic conditions of that society. You don't really need Ac, Casita for that.

Deadfire actually has plenty of places where they set the stage for a really complex interplay of factions beyond many CRPGs, because in places like the Gullet or Motare Kozi [sic] you don't just get the classic "oh different factions want different things what will you do", but you also see how factions are torn apart within themselves, how what x faction wants may not be good for that faction, and how you can't simply help one side 'win'. Sadly, the game lets this go to waste because of the well documented problem in trying to be a seafaring open world Eothas-chasing god-chatting game at the same time.

 

[PsychoFox]

People talk with borrowed words or sentences from other languages when both participants know both languages. I don't use English words when talking to my mother for example, she doesn't speak English, but I do use German words from time to time. I also regularly switch languages with my friends who do speak English. But I never do it like the PoE reptiloids who pretend to be human. Every multilingual person will notice this immediately, it's cringe-y, I'd say even a bit racist and ignorant. It's trying to enjoy the luxury of exoticism without paying for it, if I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

Of course, and that's the same for me.

It might have worked to keep a few iconic and relatively unobtrusive tics - like 'Ac' and 'Ekera' at half the current frequency - and get rid of a lot of the special jargon, and instead focus on showing how the actual political and cultural attitudes of the different folk differ. Focus more on how the Vailians might be more opulent or status-driven, the Rauatai like to trumpet meritocracy, and so on.

The Gullet makes such a great first impression because instead of being bombarded with Fampyrs and Ekeras, you get to see and experience in the very quest structure & map design how the arrival of foreign powers has upended traditional Huana society. And you don't get "oh the natives were so happy before the bad fake Europeans came", more like how it was an extremely discriminatory and problematic society which is breaking apart because the foreigners are upending the basic material/economic conditions of that society. You don't really need Ac, Casita for that.

Deadfire actually has plenty of places where they set the stage for a really complex interplay of factions beyond many CRPGs, because in places like the Gullet or Motare Kozi [sic] you don't just get the classic "oh different factions want different things what will you do", but you also see how factions are torn apart within themselves, how what x faction wants may not be good for that faction, and how you can't simply help one side 'win'. Sadly, the game lets this go to waste because of the well documented problem in trying to be a seafaring open world Eothas-chasing god-chatting game at the same time.

sadly, and from what i understand, there is no real payoff to all this factional politics because the writers didn't manage to tie it to the main quest properly.

 

[Crichton]

I recently started a new playthrough to try out the TB mode, and after conversing with the Governor at Port Maje, I'm inclined to agree that the frequency of Vailian expressions is too high. But of all the things to complain about, I don't know why this sticks in people's craws so tightly. There are many more problems in Deadfire with characterization (the bickering Skype Gods) or plot (see comments on Eder's quest above). Attempting to model foreign expressions is a step up from most RPG writing and if it isn't perfect, it's not that different from many real people who speak English perfectly well but end every other sentence with 'Inshallah' or respond to everything with 'Auch so'. I think overall the dialog in Deadfire is pretty smooth and consider for a moment what it's competing with!

 

[Theldaran]

Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition detected!

 

[santino27]

People talk with borrowed words or sentences from other languages when both participants know both languages. I don't use English words when talking to my mother for example, she doesn't speak English, but I do use German words from time to time. I also regularly switch languages with my friends who do speak English. But I never do it like the PoE reptiloids who pretend to be human. Every multilingual person will notice this immediately, it's cringe-y, I'd say even a bit racist and ignorant. It's trying to enjoy the luxury of exoticism without paying for it, if I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

Yep. I only lapse into Spanish when speaking with someone who also speaks both spanish and english and when there's a phrase that doesn't translate well in English.

 

[pomenitul]

You guys are thinking too hard about this.

 

[Lacrymas]

Well, if it wasn't Obs, somebody else had to.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I think overall the dialog in Deadfire is pretty smooth and consider for a moment what it's competing with!

Overall agree with the first two screenshots, but fail to see much of a problem with the third.

 

[Crichton]

I think overall the dialog in Deadfire is pretty smooth and consider for a moment what it's competing with!

Overall agree with the first two screenshots, but fail to see much of a problem with the third.

Close the door to your office and read it aloud.

I think this passage and the Firkaag one are both excellent examples of dialog written to convey information without any regard to how people (even fantasy people) actually talk. I'm generally opposed to bloating RPGs with lots of spoken dialog, but one advantage might be that it acts as a check on corny or stilted dialog since it becomes more obvious when you hear it. "That dreadful night, it was him who had opened the gate and let the assassins in." Even once you correct the grammar, it sounds like it was poorly translated from Japanese. A couple sentences later, the same speaker abandons his overly formal style for "Anyway, Lady Jamandi sends her apologies."

Of these three, I agree that the pathfinder one is probably the least bad (Engrish aside), but these were chosen randomly from google images and aren't representative of the whole. There's plenty of awful dialog elsewhere in the game, though thankfully most of it isn't voiced.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

The biggest problem with Vallian accents and words is that they are not Vallian. But Italian. And they are as annoying and sound as bad as constantly listening to someone who speaks english with really bad Italian accent.
Its not just any foreign accent, but a very specific and completely obnoxious one that only makes a lot of people think why the fuck are Italians in this fantasy game and what the fuck does Italy and all those Guidos do in Deadfire?
The native lingo isnt much better, with words and expressions that just sound stupid, although at least to me it seems unrelated to something so specific as Italy.

But then they make it all much worse by forcing it so much. And then even worse by making each and every single individual use those expressions and accents in exact same way. No individual difference at all.
A whole faction speaks in exact same way.

You cant just introduce such expressions and go "well, one foreign language and or invented expressions are the same as any other."
They are not. Some are more acceptable, some are like listening to nails being dragged over a chalkboard.

 

[Tigranes]

Again, I think this is the trouble with trying to do fantasy 'properly'. Should you invent an entirely new language and accent? That seems counterproductive. Should you selectively borrow from existing stereotypes like pirates, elves and Italian? In fact, everybody does it, but it's very easy to get into uncanny / weird / stupid-sounding territory, and that's so subjective it's really difficult to iron it out.

Most RPGs, fantasy books, etc., just skip all this hard work and go for the vaguely Tolkien/D&D/etc hodgepodge tradition that everybody seems to know: fake English countryside names (Lake of Hard Boners, Bonershire), faux Medieval military/political structures, etc. Which is fine, not every game needs to invent new lore and shit.

It probably works best when your entire game/setting is about one specific culture, and you can reinforce it in the entire game's story, plot, design. Imagine if POE1 was only about the Hollowborn crisis, more or less, and how society tears itself apart trying to fight the destruction of its fundamental conditions for survival, with the practice of Animancy becoming a (justified?) scapegoat - without needing to bring in Thaos or the Gods into it at all. Imagine if POE2 was only about colonial settlers versus the Huana, in that tricky touch-and-go moment where the settlers are irrevocably changing Huana culture but have not conquered them fully yet - without needing to bring in Eothas, Gods, Italians versus Rauatai, etc. all into it.

 

[Crichton]

The biggest problem with Vallian accents and words is that they are not Vallian. But Italian. And they are as annoying and sound as bad as constantly listening to someone who speaks english with really bad Italian accent.
Its not just any foreign accent, but a very specific and completely obnoxious one that only makes a lot of people think why the fuck are Italians in this fantasy game and what the fuck does Italy and all those Guidos do in Deadfire?
The native lingo isnt much better, with words and expressions that just sound stupid, although at least to me it seems unrelated to something so specific as Italy.

But then they make it all much worse by forcing it so much. And then even worse by making each and every single individual use those expressions and accents in exact same way. No individual difference at all.
A whole faction speaks in exact same way.

You cant just introduce such expressions and go "well, one foreign language and or invented expressions are the same as any other."
They are not. Some are more acceptable, some are like listening to nails being dragged over a chalkboard.

I never had a problem with this but I have often wondered how irritating Italians find the Vailian dialog.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd say it actively detracts from the setting because it's so obviously artificial and constructed with no real understanding of how human beings work and talk.

 

[Tigranes]

And I'd say it's a well intentioned, overambitious, ultimately not-hugely-beneficial thing that's been idiotically overblown by some people who just can't take the idea that "Duc" or "Fampyr" are actual alternative spellings. (Not aimed at Lacrymas, but remembering the initial post-release hooplah)

My point is that the ultimately meh result of the endeavour is tied to wider issues on a game that was far too overambitious re. worldbuilding, factions, plot, without sufficient ability to tie it together - and then exacerbated that issue for the sequel.

 

[Brancaleone]

I'd say it actively detracts from the setting because it's so obviously artificial and constructed with no real understanding of how human beings work and talk.

Venga, do you wirklich think que someone who parla something from more than un idioma wouldn't somente mix alcune words for mierda and giggles?

 

[hivemind]

I found the Valian dialogue comfy

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Ekera is iconic

 

[Jimmious]

Bazzo!

 

[Eisenheinrich]

I think the primary disappointment of Deadfire for me was precisely the exploration. You have a huge map, you discover islands in the archipelago, but in the majority of cases they only house a one-area, one-screen-wide "dungeon" where all you can do is walk from one end of the area to the other, meet your combat encounter, and leave with the loot.

TWM or Deadfire's Forgotten Scrotum had so much more depth to their exploration. I think the key goal is to make the player feel he has "lost himself" in the dungeon, descended so many levels, taken so many turns at junctions, left huge unexplored areas in the other junctions, and there is no end in sight. More examples of this type of exploration - Old Sycamore (if we leave the excessive combat aside), or Underrail (basically anywhere)

Old City in Neketake did that for me, even more so, if you count Delvers Row and the Underground Docks in.