Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[AwesomeButton]

Yeesh. Please don't compare me to these guys.

Oh no way, I didn't compare you. I specifically said that this talking about lowering the difficulty reminded me of them as an extreme example.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Josh made a combat system more complex than the IE games, said he makes a successor to the IE games, and to people who found it difficult said, "just play at a lower difficulty" (in other words "ignore most of my combat sysem's mechanics"). Then he pondered why people disliked his design.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Josh made a combat system more complex than the IE games, said he makes a successor to the IE games, and to people who found it difficult said, "just play at a lower difficulty" (in other words "ignore most of my combat sysem's mechanics"). Then he pondered why people disliked his design.

Yeah, I think if he'd done something like had a difficulty below POTD that had all the mechanics ramped up in the same way but had fewer encounters, or maybe even fewer enemies per pack for the people who wanted to have to consider buffs and debuffs but didn't quite want to figure out how to take apart the enemy packs, that would've been a better change. Like basically have all of the POTD mechanics but not the increased enemies and just leave that for POTD. Oh well.

At least I think I can now solidly put POTD into the flawed gem category rather than the boring trash I had written it off as. I'm looking forward to WM2 and Deadfire, honestly.

 

[Roguey]

Sometimes I wonder how the fuck people even travel around. Every time a kid goes to visit his grandma he has a 95% chance of stumbling upon four Mênpŵgra, ten Pŵgra, and a pack of lions.

If they stick to the roads they'll mostly be fine.

 

[Decado]

Don't really remember which armor I've used. Sanguine Plate maybe? Extra Frenzy uses could be handy. Plus it looks great.

Cool, thanks. I have this quest already so I might as well do it now.

But make sure to buy Hours of St. Rumbalt greatsword from Dyrford ASAP. That, combined with Carnage and high Intelligence is just the coolest barbarian combo ever.

Is Hours better than Tidefall for a barb?

Edit: Dumb question, nevermind. After looking at it, Hours seems to be better. Tidefall is great but 1) The heals are somewhat unnecessary at this point, since I've got two per encounter Endurance boosters and 2) Tidefall raw DoT is nice but things are usually not alive long enough for the full effect and it seems like the 50% (!!) Crit modifier is a better bet. Brb, buying a new sword . . .

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Sometimes I wonder how the fuck people even travel around. Every time a kid goes to visit his grandma he has a 95% chance of stumbling upon four Mênpŵgra, ten Pŵgra, and a pack of lions.

If they stick to the roads they'll mostly be fine.

oh so it's like inverse chicago

 

[Haplo]

Don't really remember which armor I've used. Sanguine Plate maybe? Extra Frenzy uses could be handy. Plus it looks great.

Cool, thanks. I have this quest already so I might as well do it now.

But make sure to buy Hours of St. Rumbalt greatsword from Dyrford ASAP. That, combined with Carnage and high Intelligence is just the coolest barbarian combo ever.

Is Hours better than Tidefall for a barb?

Edit: Dumb question, nevermind. After looking at it, Hours seems to be better. Tidefall is great but 1) The heals are somewhat unnecessary at this point, since I've got two per encounter Endurance boosters and 2) Tidefall raw DoT is nice but things are usually not alive long enough for the full effect and it seems like the 50% (!!) Crit modifier is a better bet. Brb, buying a new sword . . .

Make sure to have a Priest with Devotions of the Faithful and the Painful Interdiction upgrade for frequent crits!

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I never undrstood the big deal that Pillars' writers are trying to make of "omg, gods aren't real gods, they are these very powerful engwithans who through [magical gibberrish explanation] secured immortality for their consciousness".

Isn't it obvious that the average person in the world wouldn't make a distinction between "a god" and whatever "non-god" these engwithans have become, and if anything, this revelation confirms that there exist conscious forces watching and controlling the world.

It doesn't make sense logically, but I understand why a person would think that way :

Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity.[1] In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it, "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing".[2] The contrary view—non-essentialism—denies the need to posit such an "essence'".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

But I've never seen a coherent argument as to why they aren't gods unless you equate god with something akin to the omnipotent Christian God. They display many godlike powers. Greek mythology has quite a few mortals who became gods e.g., Ino.

Also, Rymrgand wasn't created like the others, so even if you buy that argument it still doesn't apply to him.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It always struck me that the point of the reveal is a chicken or egg sort of deal. The standard view is that Gods created everything including the kith, but the reality is that the kith fabricated the Gods for their own purposes. This also has implications regarding the potential power of the kith and sciences such as animancy. It points out why the Leaden Key exists and is actively working against progress and developments in animancy.

The Gods are powerful constructs of the kith and can be undone or reforged by them if they so choose. It changes the nature of the roles involved and implies that although the Gods have great power in the manner of an epic level wizard, they are not distinctly "Other". If you consider it in the manner of hierarchies, the question is whether the Gods are higher than the kith. The standard view is that to be Gods, they have to be higher than kith. But since they are the creations of kith and can be undone by them, the Gods are necessarily lower in the hierarchy. Consider this against something like Aristotle's hierarchy of living things (higher -> lower; God -> human -> animal -> plant). POE's assumed hierarchy would be like Aristotle's just shown, but POE's true hierarchy is kith -> "Gods" -> animal -> plant. Assuming that "Gods" aren't actually lower since they are complete fabrications like super powerful golems whereas plants and animals exist independently. In my opinion, you should properly consider the "Gods" to be akin to the epitome of the vessels, which in this setting include both golems and undead. Literally, a vessel (in the sense of container) filled with souls.

It's a bit of a weird and heady plot point for a standard CRPG, but it's compelling enough.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

But beyond all of that, my original point was this:

What is the functional difference between a god and what the Engwithans became? There doesn't seem to be one to me. They behave as gods, they are worshipped as gods, they are gods. The "big secret" is that they derived their power from the turning of the Wheel. But like I said, people still believe in the Abrahamic God despite Him killing tons of people in the flood and in the Egyptian plagues. If the Engwithans merely said that the souls sacrificed were wicked, sinful souls, wouldn't that be enough for most of the kith?

If you are talking about God as it is understood in real life religions, the entire point is precisely that God is NOT actually a relative kind of being, something that is still woven in time and space.

St. Agustine argued that God could not be corporeal and that he had to be exist outside of time and space. According to Aquinas, he is Being in the higher sense, not such or such a being but Being as such, and everything that "is" exists only by virtue of God being Existence in and of itself in it's absolute essence.

Consider that for most of Christian history it was forbidden to actually despict the Father, meaning that something like Michelangelo's Adam would have been considered blasphemous. God is the "I AM THAT I AM", he cannot be anthropomorphized.

In a seemingly "polytheistic" religion like Hinduism, which appears to have many "gods", the Abrahamic God would be closer to the Atman, and most religion also have a conception of such an absolute, "prime" principle, whether it is the One of Plato, The Tao, the "Great Spirit" of the American Indians and so forth. Even Buddhism, which appears to be a non-theistic religion, also has a conception of this supreme reality or principle which they refuse to define precisely because to define it is to limit it, but the "void" of Buddhism is nothing other than the "holies of holy" of Judaism, or the "hidden treasure" of Islam etc.

Because most fantasy settings are created by dirty hippies who have no clue about any of this, it is not surprising that even when they admit to the existence of divine entities they envision them in terms that are purely relative, and it is not surprising that Pillars, which wants to be "adult" and "mature" in respect of previous fantasy settings, wants to dispense even of that.

This really reads like Greeks and Romans trying to explain gods from other religions by equating them with their gods which they found foreign gods being most similar to. And then we read about how foreign cultures worshiped Zeus, Apollo and Athena.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Probably one reason the whole big problem about the gods' origin rings false for me is that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of institutionalized religion shown in the games.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Probably one reason the whole big problem about the gods' origin rings false for me is that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of institutionalized religion shown in the games.

There are a few things like the random NPC chats about various deities and the shrines and temples that are around in various areas like Magran's Fork, Defiance Bay, Stalwart, etc. I think the bigger problem is that it's hard to turn your expectations on their heads when they've barely introduced the world and so you have no real expectations about it. Is the reveal profound to the game world? Probably, yes. Does it make sense in terms of the world and villain's motivations? Sure. Is there anything at all that makes you as a player care or that makes it resonate or for you to go holy crap, I can't believe this plot twist? Nah. If they had something more straightforward and then had this at the end of a trilogy or something where it turns everything on its head, that'd be much more effective. Like if you had fought on behalf of the temples, taken a part in the Saint's War, etc. and seen the power of the Gods up front in that manner and started develop a head canon and then it was all ripped away in a follow up, that'd be pretty great.

It's like despite the game's length and how it's actually decent at bringing in various hooks, it's trying to do too much narratively in too short an amount of time. I think if, for instance, they had a game about the Saint's War with the culmination being the battle at the bridge. Maybe have a follow up focus on the hollowborn and the resolution determining the cause of it and disabling the Engwithean machines and then the trilogy finale show the Leaden Key plot through the ages, blah blah. I expect that probably would've paid off far better.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I think the bigger problem is that it's hard to turn your expectations on their heads when they've barely introduced the world and so you have no real expectations about it.

Yeah, definitely that.

BTW I checked, and swapping the running animations for walking animations isn't possible through the game data files for Deadfire. We could reduce the speeds so that they move about as fast as in the IE games, but I guess the libraries need to be modified to switch the actual animation that's used, and it will just look awkward if everyone is running very slowly.

 

[pomenitul]

Look, a fair and legitimate criticism of PoE that isn't foaming at the mouth! What's this website coming to?

 

[Lacrymas]

Look, a fair and legitimate criticism of PoE that isn't foaming at the mouth! What's this website coming to?

If you want something more spicy, you should definitely check out what's happening in the Shadowrun Returns thread ;d

But I've never seen a coherent argument as to why they aren't gods unless you equate god with something akin to the omnipotent Christian God.

There are maybe two ways to argue they aren't gods that I can come up with at the top of my head. The first one is to say that nothing technically depends on their existence, the universe existed before them and so can exist after them. This isn't true in the old religions. Lightning exists because Zeus throws it, Helios/Apollo rides his chariot from sunrise till sunset in the sky and so is the sun, Geb in Egyptian mythology is the earth and his laughter causes earthquakes. It's a little bit more complicated than this, especially in Greek mythology and specifically in philosophy, but that's enough for our purpose. The second explanation that I'm more fond of and have argued for in the past is that the gods in Eora are in actuality the state. They are Hobbes' Leviathan, a supreme authority voluntarily given power by the people to rule over them. It's never about power level because those things are relative and drawing arbitrary lines about when a wizard stops and a god begins is not satisfying or convincing.

It's like despite the game's length and how it's actually decent at bringing in various hooks, it's trying to do too much narratively in too short an amount of time. I think if, for instance, they had a game about the Saint's War with the culmination being the battle at the bridge. Maybe have a follow up focus on the hollowborn and the resolution determining the cause of it and disabling the Engwithean machines and then the trilogy finale show the Leaden Key plot through the ages, blah blah. I expect that probably would've paid off far better.

We have to talked about this before, you can check that out here. It's interesting how every time someone new plays the game for the first time, the same points crop up again and again. To the point that I can create a list describing what people will complain about, I actually have a rudimentary one running right now for Lyric Suite's playthrough and he's going through the list at quite a rapid pace.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There are maybe two ways to argue they aren't gods that I can come up with at he top of my head. The first one is to say that nothing technically depends on their existence, the universe existed before them and so can exist after them. This isn't true in the old religions. Lightning exists because Zeus throws it, Helios/Apollo rides his chariot from dusk till dawn in the sky and so is the sun, Geb in Egyptian mythology is the earth and his laughter causes earthquakes.

this isn't true though
e.g.,
Ondra is believed to be the reason tides exist due to her yearning for the moon.

 

[Lacrymas]

They might believe whatever they want, but the fact remains the universe existed without them before the Engwithans created them, so nothing depends on their existence.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

They might believe whatever they want, but the fact remains the universe existed without them before the Engwithans created them, so nothing depends on their existence.

if you want to take it literally: the wheel relies on them existing

 

[NJClaw]

They might believe whatever they want, but the fact remains the universe existed without them before the Engwithans created them, so nothing depends on their existence.

if you want to take it literally: the wheel relies on them existing

The wheel was already there before they ascended, they merely tampered with it. However, they tampered with it so much that now it can't go back to its previous state.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

They might believe whatever they want, but the fact remains the universe existed without them before the Engwithans created them, so nothing depends on their existence.

if you want to take it literally: the wheel relies on them existing

The wheel was already there before they ascended, they merely tampered with it. However, they tampered with it so much that now it can't go back to its previous state.

I'll admit I skim over most of the dialogue in the games but I don't remember this at all

 

[Lacrymas]

Both you bitches be wrong. The wheel existed before the gods, but the refined process after the Engwithans doesn't rely on the gods, the giant machine(s) on top of Ukaizo is controlling it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

meh who cares it's dumb

 

[NJClaw]

Both you bitches be wrong. The wheel existed before the gods, but the refined process after the Engwithans doesn't rely on the gods, the giant machine(s) on top of Ukaizo is controlling it.

You can't say I'm wrong and then proceed to restate exactly what I said. The wheel existed before them, what they did somehow broke it and now it can't go back to how it worked.

I'll admit I skim over most of the dialogue in the games but I don't remember this at all

I can't be bothered to find a screenshot right now, but both games say multiple times that the wheel was already there and the engwigays simply discovered how to manipulate it. Sawyer confirms that here, if you trust the guy:

Spoiler

 

[Lacrymas]

You can't say I'm wrong and then proceed to restate exactly what I said. The wheel existed before them, what they did somehow broke it and now it can't go back to how it worked.

By "they", I thought you meant the gods. The gods have nothing to do with it, the machines "broke" it.