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

[Infinitron]

 

[Delterius]

I prefer his original response tbh.

 

[vortex]

Opinion: Pillars 3 requires dark arts and dark tone like Diablo IV.

 

[Riddler]

Opinion: Pillars 3 requires dark arts and dark tone like Diablo IV.

Pillars 3 requires rehiring Ziets to conduct dark rituals to sort out the metaphysics of the setting.

 

[Tenebris]

I do wonder if we'll still have Godlikes in Pillars 3 if we end up getting one. Considering

Spoiler

they're pretty much just backup soul batteries for the Gods and since the wheel is gone...

 

[Riddler]

I do wonder if we'll still have Godlikes in Pillars 3 if we end up getting one. Considering

Spoiler

they're pretty much just backup soul batteries for the Gods and since the wheel is gone...

Pretty convenient way to reduce the required art assets and reactivity!

 

[Infinitron]

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/188767385726/hey-josh-what-was-the-worldbuilding-process-like

Hey Josh. What was the worldbuilding process like on Pillars of Eternity?

This could be a very long answer, but I’ll try to be succinct. In my mind, there have been three worldbuilding phases for Eora. The first one occurred during the Kickstarter for Project Eternity. The second occurred during the development of Pillars of Eternity. The third was during Deadfire.

The first phase was quite ad hoc and a little unfocused due to the extremely fast pace of the Kickstarter campaign. In that phase, the goals were largely to create something that felt generally comfortable and familiar for people who wanted a Baldur’s Gate-style experience. I would not consider it unfair if people thought of this as cynical or uninspired; I was specifically trying to meet general audience expectations. So we had folk (humans), elves, and dwarves, but also godlike (aesthetically genasi-esques), orlans, and aumaua.

There were a few shreds of integrity in me at that point, because I didn’t want to have an “evil” player race like orcs or to directly take hobbits/halflings from Tolkien.

I also pulled at various bits of historical inspiration, e.g. the Drummer of Niklashausen for St. Waidwen. I thought it would be interesting (to me, at least) to push the setting toward the equivalent of Earth’s 16th century in terms of technology and social expansion. So we had trans-oceanic exploration and colonization, firearms, mercantilism, and a lot of cross-cultural contact and conflict. Aedyran, which is effectively contemporary English, was conceived as a colonial blend of two imperial/trade languages (Eld Aedyran/Old English and Vailian/Italian-French-Occitan) with a local language (Glanfathan/Cornish-Welsh).

The second phase of worldbuilding was more structured, though I still had to deal with whatever decisions I had hastily made during the Kickstarter. Eric Fenstermaker (who wrote the main story for Pillars 1) and I worked through the implications of the Hollowborn Crisis on social trends and daily life in the Dyrwood. This phase of development was also more fundamentally materialistic in its methodology, though not enough in retrospect. I would have liked to have put more thought into the relationships between the various erldoms, their communities, and the duc in Defiance Bay. The disconnect between rural and urban Dyrwoodans does largely come out of this materialistic approach: rural communities are affected by the Hollowborn Crisis more than urban communities. This is both because more children were affected (due to proximity to the machines Thaos was using) and because rural communities’ labor pools were more dependent on local family members.

There were also certain limits I placed on technology during this phase, like limiting the ability to teleport material (including people) due to the incredible effect that would have on so many aspects of trade and culture. Its inclusion in Deadfire was only allowed after a lot of discussions of its limitations (e.g., requiring a Watcher linking adra pillars and the use of massive, expensive Vailian technology).

Overall, the third phase of worldbuilding was the most thought out. Deadfire had many more designers contributing to the worldbuilding process, more discussion and critique of that worldbuilding, and more iteration. I think that the factions in Deadfire are very well-developed due to the time and attention all of the designers put into them. At the root of all of this was a materialistic approach to considering how people in power used their power to try to take control of the Deadfire - and why. It wasn’t articulated in those terms during development, but that was how I directed the development: thinking of each culture and factions in material terms first and foremost. Ultimately, even small factions like the Dawnstars were driven by material concerns (the post-Saint’s War Readcerans were devastated by crop failures and other economic hardships).

Developing fantasy worlds can be very difficult because of the implications of magic, huge creatures, powerful species of intelligent creatures that are viewed with hostility by dominant cultures, etc. I think we did a better/more thorough job on Deadfire than Pillars 1 in part because the process we used on the sequel had more time for deliberation.

 

[Prime Junta]

There were a few shreds of integrity in me at that point

And now he's started drinking.

 

[Delterius]

There were a few shreds of integrity in me at that point

And now he's started drinking.

only the most well crafted of craft beer this side of hipsterfornia so its more of a cheers type of situation

 

[Prime Junta]

only the most well crafted of craft beer this side of hipsterfornia so its more of a cheers type of situation

Naw he’s into vodka and red bull now.

 

[Lacrymas]

Sawyer's thought processes are on the right track, though. Like I've said before, he's a good developer, but something, somewhere went horribly wrong and we got a parody of a well thought-out narrative (in PoE1). It's probably very frustrating to constantly be superseded by inferior things. PoE2's narrative was a mistake, but I don't think he had any say in that.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Sawyer's thought processes are on the right track, though. Like I've said before, he's a good developer, but something, somewhere went horribly wrong and we got a parody of a well thought-out narrative (in PoE1). It's probably very frustrating to constantly be superseded by inferior things. PoE2's narrative was a mistake, but I don't think he had any say in that.

Isn't he narrative designer on top of game designer too?

 

[Prime Junta]

PoE2's narrative was a mistake, but I don't think he had any say in that.

He had a say. He strikes me as a go-along-to-get-along type though so maybe he just wasn’t able to say, kate, honey, your writing sucks, maybe consider another line of work?

 

[Mikeal]

He was depressed that all cool boys left Obsidian and he's stuck with dykes and dangerhairs for the rest of his career.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Meanwhile, development of factions in Outer Worlds: they get a logo and a jingle.

 

[FreeKaner]

Trying to redeem Sawyer just because he said he tried so hard and got so far but in the end it doesn't even matter.

 

[Roguey]

Naw he’s into vodka and red bull now.

I get the impression he's into anything that'll get him drunk.
From

to


(I question the science behind this statement)

(I'd advise against clicking through to read the rest of this tmi conversation)

 

[Prime Junta]

/me clicks through

Seems pretty innocuous, just some light flirting. Did they sanitise it?

 

[Delterius]

just some light flirting

cue a joke about how roguey can't stand women flirting with joshua

 

[Alpan]

/me clicks through

Seems pretty innocuous, just some light flirting. Did they sanitise it?

Yeah, there's literally one tweet to read in "the rest of this conversation".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PoE2's narrative was a mistake, but I don't think he had any say in that.

He had a say. He strikes me as a go-along-to-get-along type though so maybe he just wasn’t able to say, kate, honey, your writing sucks, maybe consider another line of work?

Do you think awkward nerdy men who are likely incapable of holding regular conversations with women would be capable of telling them this?

 

[Roguey]

/me clicks through

Seems pretty innocuous, just some light flirting. Did they sanitise it?

No, but I can read between the lines and that's as lurid as one can get without being explicit.

 

[Jedi Exile]

If there is going to be PoE3, I hope it will have turn-based combat.

 

[Prime Junta]

/me clicks through

Seems pretty innocuous, just some light flirting. Did they sanitise it?

No, but I can read between the lines and that's as lurid as one can get without being explicit.

Not really. I’ve been party to that kind of banter and 9 times out of 10 it’s just somebody spilling a beer or something.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

This is the third time i'm quoting this, but in light of this Sawyer tweet-string, there has never been a more appropriate time for it:

I've come to the realisation that western games suck because western game devs tend to have little to no interesting life experience. They were annoying dorks in high school who then became politically correct dorks in college and then became meek robotic corporate dorks after and went on to making games without getting in a fist fight, crashing drunk or snorting a few lines between. Hence generally their attempts to write realism or seriousness fall flat.