Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Drudkh]

Holy shit Roguey, that really is the big one... well. When it comes to the Fighter, the class still won't be better than a Paladin even with that new skill, so really they deserve it if anything.

Making preemptive resist spells an option... who would have thought that they would take the simplest route possible to address complaints about stun abuse bosses/encounters? Whatever, it's not like the difficulty the game offers currently is anything but RNG based anyways. I'm fine with the change. Atleast this last patch will hopefully pull the chanter out of shit tier hell.

Ultimately i think i'll just spare myself the trouble of suffering the combat in this game and play through easy mode if by some miraculous chance this conclusion of PoE offers some crazy good story or companion content. New Torment beta coming out before this so... :D

 

[Maculo]

Oh god damn it, Obsidian makes the change after I complete my Priest playhrough on PotD. Thanks Sawyer.

Ultimately i think i'll just spare myself the trouble of suffering the combat in this game and play through easy mode if by some miraculous chance this conclusion of PoE offers some crazy good story or companion content. New Torment beta coming out before this so... :D

Personally, I think the companion content is thin for an Obsidian game, and most are not that good outside Durance, Grieving Mother, and Eder (purely my opinion).

As for story, I think PoE has a lot of good moments actually, but those moments lack context until you beat the game. For me, I enjoyed my second playthrough far more when I understood what was going on. It's like the movie Memento in terms of needed context, but just not executed nearly as well.

 

[Somberlain]

This is the big one, folks.

Prayer against ________ spells now grant full immunity to their afflictions, though the base duration was reduced a bit.
...
As of TWM Pt. II, there are scrolls for all Prayer against _______ spells and Lore can be used by anyone. Chanters get a 4th level Invocation that (among other things) cancels/prevents Frightened/Terrified. Paladins have a new passive ability called Aegis of Loyalty that makes it very difficult for Confused/Charmed/Dominated characters to hit them (lowers Accuracy) and if the paladin hits a teammate under one of those effects, the attack does minimal damage and cancels the affliction.
...
I also just added a fighter ability available at 7th level called Fearless that grants immunity to Frightened and Terrified.

Hard counter spells.

After a long battle, good game design finally triumphs over balance faggotry

 

[Roguey]

After a long battle, good game design finally triumphs over balance faggotry

Josh "I guess hard counters aren't so bad after all" Sawyer entered it very carefully. You don't need a priest because you can just use scrolls and any one companion with enough lore for 'em.

Personally, I think the companion content is thin for an Obsidian game

Unfortunately there's no official tally for kotor2 or motb but http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_longest_video_game_scripts gives a count for the BGs.

Pillars of Eternity has 25,000 lines of dialogue and over 700,000 words. Base BG has 23,000 lines, 430,000 words. Roughly the same number lines, almost twice the words (much to a lot of peoples' annoyance).

 

[Maculo]

To clarify, it is not so much the number of lines or even the quality of the dialogue, but the development or lack thereof. Most of the companion quests end abruptly and are not all that satisfying in my opinion, with some exception. Aloth, Devil of Carroc, and Kana's quests just end. Of all the companion quests, I only found Eder and Durance's conclusions fitting. Moreover, unlike F:NV or Kotor 2, the companion content does not yield much change. For example, F:NV gave unique perks for the each companion, which depended on what path you led them through, or you could train your companions to be Jedi/Sith in Kotor 2. Ultimately, there was less of a reward for sticking with companions, either story-wise or mechanically.

If Obsidian releases PoE 2, the companion content will be one of my first gripes (non-combat related gripes that is).

 

[Malpercio]

3.0.? Jesus, I don't know about I feel about this constant changing stuff in single player games.

I mean, I should be happy they enhancing the experience, but...

 

[Roguey]

All my patience will be worth it.

 

[Infinitron]

Well now, this is interesting. While I still disagree that individual immunities to status effects can be considered "hard counters" in a general sense, when placed on player characters they might be hard counters via specific enemy types that rely heavily on status effects, such as Spores. Although they might not be so effective if the duration is short.

Another interesting thing here is the addition of status effect resistance abilities to other classes, which is something I advised Josh to do in one of my many Tumblr missives.

 

[Sannom]

That's not true for Kana and Aloth. Their quest disappear from the journal, true, but the interactions you have with them after they're completed which feeds back into the themes of those quests don't end there. Aloth gets decisive about Iselmyr after you meet the Delemgan sisters in Twin Elms and Kana has a lot more interrogations about progress and tradition over the course of the game (especially in the Sanitarium).

 

[Theldaran]

Pillars of Eternity has 25,000 lines of dialogue and over 700,000 words. Base BG has 23,000 lines, 430,000 words. Roughly the same number lines, almost twice the words (much to a lot of peoples' annoyance).

How can it not? Walls of text are common in Pillars, especially when in Watcher mode (I read maybe one or two). There were some in BG too, but not as much. And in BG2 it was decided to do away with them and pack the text in 1-2 lines.

They did write a lot, but it doesn't make the game better or with fatter content. Sad.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I would assume that backer NPCs are not included in that statistic; otherwise, yes, that is a hilariously skewed and misleading statistic.

 

[Infinitron]

I strongly doubt that the word and line counts that Roguey loves throwing out are measured with any sort of consistency. I wouldn't take them too seriously.

 

[Maculo]

That's not true for Kana and Aloth. Their quest disappear from the journal, true, but the interactions you have with them after they're completed which feeds back into the themes of those quests don't end there. Aloth gets decisive about Iselmyr after you meet the Delemgan sisters in Twin Elms and Kana has a lot more interrogations about progress and tradition over the course of the game (especially in the Sanitarium).

(I assume this was directed at my post)

True, but that dialogue depends on keeping them in party to that point. The quests themselves just trail off in my opinion. Moreover, compared to prior Obsidian games, investment in each character leads to no in-game changes, such as perks. The perks may sound inconsequential at first, but I always looked forward to them from a gameplay perspective. It gave me something to look forward to when training Atton to be a Jedi, getting Okku's loyalty, etc.

 

[AwesomeButton]

This is the big one, folks.

[shitty quoting of quotes is broken again, I'm not going to bother with doing it manually]

Hard counter spells.

Thumbs up. This game may start gravitating towards fun, albeit one year after release. I feel sorry for having played it up to the end of act II.

Pillars of Eternity has 25,000 lines of dialogue and over 700,000 words. Base BG has 23,000 lines, 430,000 words. Roughly the same number lines, almost twice the words (much to a lot of peoples' annoyance).

I wonder how much of PoE's 25,000 lines is made up by graphomaniac backers' verbal diarrhea.

Some of the harder battles were hard due to a bug. lel

 

[Infinitron]

 

[tdphys]

Pillars of Eternity has 25,000 lines of dialogue and over 700,000 words. Base BG has 23,000 lines, 430,000 words. Roughly the same number lines, almost twice the words (much to a lot of peoples' annoyance).

Just for future reference, in Vanilla POE there are 117 backer stories constituting ~ 26837 words. This is found in the file backercontent.stringtable and doesn't include all of the xml crap, which I stripped out.

Lines is a weird measure, cause I don't know if Roguey means "entries" or actual newlines.

 

[Roguey]

I'm just going by the figure Brandon gave https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78825-the-reason-why-a-lot-of-va-isnt-voiced/#entry1680491

 

[Kem0sabe]

The decision to include all those backer npcs with those silly stories, is one of the most dumbfuck decisions I have ever seen obsidian make, they are extremely intrusive, Immersion braking.

 

[Fry]

The decision to include all those backer npcs with those silly stories, is one of the most dumbfuck decisions I have ever seen obsidian make, they are extremely intrusive, Immersion braking.

PoE would have been better off without several things linked to backer rewards, but you can't really leave out shit people paid for.

If they crowd fund PoE 2, hopefully they're smarter about what they promise.

 

[Shevek]

I love the game but the Backer NPCs were shit. I hoped they learned a lesson there. In future, fully implement an NPC; don't throw out walls of text and call it a day. NPCs made like the random ones in BG1 would have been perfect (a random bar fight, a knife thrower, the darryls, the cat girl, the chicken apprentice, etc).

All in all, I am glad I held off on White March until Pt2. My second playthrough will be even more enjoyable than the 1st. Everything Im reading sounds fantastic.

I remember reading some stuff about them improving the stronghold a bit with this one. I hope my incessant bitching on Something Awful helped there.

 

[tdphys]

I'm just going by the figure Brandon gave https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78825-the-reason-why-a-lot-of-va-isnt-voiced/#entry1680491

So I see the line count, where did the word count come from?

 

[Infinitron]

They're in good company lul

Pillars of Eternity, Lead Writer Eric Fenstermaker; Writers Carrie Patel, Olivia Veras; Additional Writing Chris Avellone, Jeff Husges, Matt MacLean, Jorge Salgado, Josh Sawyer, George Ziets; Obsidian Entertainment

 

[Jimmious]

I enjoyed the writing in most cases (except of course all backer written stuf..) but really...Rise of the Tomb Raider for writing? AssCreed?
It's like nominating a Rambo movie for original scenario in the Oscars(not that Variety are the Oscars of games of course..)

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

not that Variety are the Oscars of games of cours

It's not the Variety nomination, it's the Writers' Guild Of America's.

 

[Roguey]

"proud"