Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Roguey]

RIP Trask Ulgo

 

[Sranchammer]

Virgil is best companion

 

[St Antony of Padua]

Virgil is best companion

He dies too. Then becomes another companion.

 

[DosBuster]

Hey, so uh, what's happening with part 2?

 

[Infinitron]

Patience, young padawan. Hopefully they'll announce a release date before the winter holidays.

 

[Copper]

In a BioWare-style game, the tendency is for you to get "mundane" companions (like poor Jory and Daveth in DA:O) in the introduction that help introduce you to the basics of the setting in a low-key way. Then something happens to them and they get replaced by the freak show parade of EXTREME WHEDON characters like Alistair and Morrigan. NWN2 does the same with Bevil Starling and that mage girl who gets killed.

However, in PoE, that's not quite the case because Eder is about as mundane as Calisca and Heodan. In fact, Eder is kind of like an expanded version of Bevil Starling, right down to the "older brother who left home and went bad" plotline.

Drawing from the classics.

The deaths annoyed me because I never get the hard-on game developers have for forcing you to solo part of a game that's designed around a party - sure, you can solo, but it's not explicitly intended. If someone wants to solo, let them dismiss the companions straight away. The 'forced tragedy' aspect is also lame. I was hoping that there were numerous ways the companions could die, but if you made the right plays, you could all arrive in Gilded Vale where they wanted nothing to do with your weird bullshit.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2015-16-11-second-expansion-for-pillars-of-eternity-announced

Obsidian has announced the second expansion for their Kickstarted roleplaying game, Pillars of Eternity. The new add-on is The White March Part 2, and will continue the story begun in the first part of the storyline.


The new expansion will include new content, including new quests, new abilities, and a new companion: Meneha, the Barbarian. The White March Part 2 will also boost the level cap and add a new mode called "Story Time", which will allow players to enjoy the narrative more by making combat easier.

The storyline has been written by the game's lead writers Eric Fensternmaker and Carrie Potel; Fensternmaker also co-wrote South Park: The Stick of Truth while Patel was also responsible for the Recoletta series.

Pillars of Eternity was released back in March and earned a 9.0/10 score in its review, while The White March Part 1 was released in August and earned a 7.5/10 score in its review. The White March Part 2 is due to be released in January 2016.

Related Games:
Pillars of Eternity

add a new mode called "Story Time", which will allow players to enjoy the narrative more by making combat easier.

 

[Infinitron]

Gotta maintain feature parity with Beamdog!

 

[Excidium II]

It's scary thinking people still have trouble playing PoE on the easy difficulty with AI behaviors.

 

[Infinitron]

Press release: http://gamasutra.com/view/pressrele..._ETERNITY_EXPANSION_TO_RELEASE_THISWINTER.php

IRVINE, CA (November 16, 2016): Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive announced today thatThe White March – Part 2, the second expansion to Pillars of Eternity, will be released late January 2016, bringing players back to the snowy borderlands of The Eastern Reach.

The White March – Part 2 adds new content to the Pillars of Eternity universe, including new quests, new abilities, and a new companion: Meneha, the Barbarian. The expansion also offers players a higher level cap, and the new “Story Time” mode, letting players experience the incredible narrative of Pillars of Eternity at a faster pace. Directed by Josh Sawyer, Game Director of Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, The White March - Part 2 features an expertly crafted story from Eric Fenstermaker, lead writer of Pillars of Eternityand the co-writer of South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Carrie Patel, author of the Recoletta series and writer on the original Pillars of Eternity.

Pillars of Eternity, created by role-playing game (RPG) veterans also known for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and South Park: The Stick of Truth, is a RPG inspired by classic titles such asBaldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. Created thanks to over 75,000 crowdfunding backers, Pillars of Eternity has sold over 600,000 units, was released to critical acclaim in March 2015, and is #6 on Metacritic’s 15 Best PC Games of 2015. The White March - Part 2 completes the story began in the first expansion, The White March – Part 1, bringing the first epic chapter in the Pillars of Eternity universe to a close .

For more information on Pillars of Eternity, visit http://pillarsofeternity.com/.

600k copies now. That was quick.

 

[Excidium II]

600k copies now. That was quick.

Thought it'd be more, based on steamspy.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'll definetly try the new mode. I just wonder how it will work - you click on an enemy and it explodes?

 

[Infinitron]

The Steam page says winter, so I'd guesstimate late January 2016 at the earliest, but probably February or even early March. Another accurate Roguey prediction.

So it's five months for each part. The opportunity to improve the game is invaluable and that stuff can carry onto the sequel, but ten months sure does feel like a lot of time nonetheless (while still being less than what other games' EEs have taken...).

Hopefully Part 2 has some cool story stuff that makes the entire thing feel like a worthwhile endeavor.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

body splits oven

 

[Rivmusique]

It's scary thinking people still have trouble playing PoE on the easy difficulty with AI behaviors.

Some players:

First attempt (episode 19):

Kill (LoS cheesing, episode 22):

Skipping to a later video, 4 camp supplies, so that's Normal IIRC (though I don't know if she's maxed out).

 

[prodigydancer]

I guess that's why they're adding a new difficulty level in TWM2...

 

[LizardWizard]

It's scary thinking people still have trouble playing PoE on the easy difficulty with AI behaviors.

The AI scripts are fucking awful and if anything end up making encounters even more of a hassle due to their shit targeting focus.

 

[Dorateen]

Skipping to a later video, 4 camp supplies

I like to think of camp supplies as a built-in biodrone detector.

 

[Fry]

It's scary thinking people still have trouble playing PoE on the easy difficulty with AI behaviors.

It might be scary but, unless RPGCodex is your sole source of gaming news and player feedback, it shouldn't surprise you in the slightest. An awful lot of "normal" people find PoE very difficult.

This is why being a game designer is not an easy job.

 

[Rostere]

It might be scary but, unless RPGCodex is your sole source of gaming news and player feedback, it shouldn't surprise you in the slightest. An awful lot of "normal" people find PoE very difficult.

This is why being a game designer is not an easy job.

You should never design games for "normal" people anyway. That's the definition of decline.

 

[Infinitron]

UPDATE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/1399158

The White March - Part II Release

Hey, everybody. We have a small update with a big announcement today. We are also going to do a spotlight on two of our new creatures from The White March - Part II.

Be on the lookout for our next update where we will feature our new companion.

The White March - Part II Early Next Year
We have some great news for all of you fans that have been waiting for the second part of The White March expansion. You can finish your journey through The White March with the second part of the expansion in late January 2016. Once an exact release date is decided on we will announce it in an update for you guys.

Vithrack Brutes and Luminaries
In the second part of the expansion we are introducing a larger slice of vithrack culture. Players will encounter brutes and luminaries, two distinct classes of vithrack. While brutes build and feed the colony, luminaries are its scholars and historians. Both varieties can be formidable foes for adventurers who encroach upon their territory.

Vithrack Brute


Vithrack Luminary

Plus soundtrack and short story stuff.

More focus on Vithracks - Underdark adventure confirmed?

 

[Fry]

You should never design games for "normal" people anyway. That's the definition of decline.

There's a fine line between dumbing down to the point of MMO-esque tedium and designing to make the obsessive neckbeard weirdos who populate this site happy.

 

[Roguey]

With two months of patching, I'll finally be able to play this a mere year after release.

 

[Sensuki]

Here's the story time scoop

Story Time is sort of the flip side of Path of the Damned. Combat populations are what they are on Normal, but we modify the stats of critters as well as incoming/outgoing damage to heavily favor the player. Some players find even Easy difficulty to be too hard. The modifications are purely procedural and do not require designers to modify existing encounters. It did not take much time to implement.

We are going to be re-tuning the late game difficulty to both reduce mobs and make the remaining combats more challenging for higher level characters.

 

[AwesomeButton]

"The modifications are purely procedural and do not require designers to modify existing encounters. It did not take much time to implement."

Lol. If that's the case, anyone who has their editing tools can produce a new difficulty level.

I've been praising Obsidian for allowing PoE to be played with so many options' setups, but I think there is a limit to the positive effect of having so many configuration options. After some point the designers' vision for how the game should look and play starts to dissolve. This is the "what do you care about feature X, it's optional" and "if you don't like it turn it off" mentality. That works fine for some features, but you can only go so far in designing a game so flexibly.

If you don't need feature X to play a game, and you don't lose anything from that, then what is this feature doing in the game in the first place?

If I can get the game to feel totally different by just changing the options and one player's gameplay experience becomes incomparable to another's, maybe the game is trying too hard to catch all possible players and it's detrimental to its base quality.

I think PoE ends up being an example of just that - in the attempt to please players with any amount of experience in RPGs, it struggles to present a challenge to players who learn more than the minimum about the game's rules. To keep these players interested, PoE throws in the PotD which is, as any "procedural" effort to increase difficulty, pretty boring. It doesn't increase difficulty by changing the opponents' strategy, but by modifying RNG, thus forcing the player to milk every possible RNG advantage they can get from the game - buffs, equipment, etc. This doesn't make the game more fun, just makes it feel more frustrating when you know you are getting beaten by the same mobs you used to beat on Hard difficulty, only because their RNG is boosted.