Whamen everywhere, even in heavy armour and weapons, seems to have been a thing in fantasy for a couple decades, like faggy dual-wielding. It's not something I'd blame Obsidian for specifically although it's sad they just go along with it.
These hipster writers really struggle to write anything that's far beyond their cosmopolitan bubble. That's how someone gave Sagani in PoE1 a line about reading detective novels from one of the civilised nations, I forget which. Nice fucking portrayal of an inuit-style hunter-gather as literate, in a foreign language no less, you APE. It's also how we get a supposedly ''early colonial archipelago'' setting with not a single slave plantation: where do the slaves of Crookspur even go once sold? In PoE2 the biggest decider for how much the party likes you is whether you tell whimsical little jokes, are nice to fluffy animals, etc. At least Maia and Pallegina are patriotic, and Xoti zealous, but none of them are hostile to other faiths or religions like real people were and are. Real history was so much edgier than this, PoE2 feels like a fluffy millenial take. We were lucky to get a single actual religious chauvinist character in PoE1 thanks to MCA, and GM's backstory was nicely edgy too, oh and we had Devil of Caroc. PoE2 definitely declined on companions and general quality of writing.
Also does Sawyer have a past of making these limp main storylines? It would have been easy to jiggle it around a little in order to give the player something to actually do to feel important. For example, have the Gods reanimate their old skeletons for a real fight with Eothas, and you could assist or oppose that. Did they write a shite storyline with an invincible protagonist (Eothas) because they ran out of money and time after focusing on the real issue of giving every fish salesman full VA?
The more I think about this game the more it irritates me. Story was bad, companions mediocre, setting mediocre, combat is good (once patched) but automatically lame because it's human vs AI (if I want fantasy combat I play vs other humans in Dogshit of the Autism 2), the exploration aspect is mediocre and it really needs those DLCs to turn out well to become good, leaving the lighting as the only thing that's actually deserving of praise.
