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

[Lyre Mors]

I see that you haven't finished the game,2house2fly left a pretty nice spoiler explanation about the cycle retardation. You are yet to get in to the bad part of the game.

For the machines...well depends how you look at it,they are more of structures controlled by magic than machines per se. Lore of the first one is that they weren't very advanced and more or less on par with the local tribes and kingdoms. This is kind of illogical because making a skyscrapers,underwater cities,floating cities and mech dragons is kind of pretty advanced,even we can't do that shit now in the real world.You would think that all the other tribes and kingdoms remained and became even more advanced.

Now here is what obsidian tells us about their technology,i see that they have updated added low effort mecha creating skill:

The only logical inconsistency I see there is that the technology used by the Engwithan in the Dyrwood area was less advanced than the technology used in the Deadfire region, but there could be any number of explanations for that from geographical, to geological, to political, to social. Beyond that, there could have been some time that passed between the construction of the Dywoodan technology and the technology in the Deadfire.

 

[fantadomat]

I see that you haven't finished the game,2house2fly left a pretty nice spoiler explanation about the cycle retardation. You are yet to get in to the bad part of the game.

For the machines...well depends how you look at it,they are more of structures controlled by magic than machines per se. Lore of the first one is that they weren't very advanced and more or less on par with the local tribes and kingdoms. This is kind of illogical because making a skyscrapers,underwater cities,floating cities and mech dragons is kind of pretty advanced,even we can't do that shit now in the real world.You would think that all the other tribes and kingdoms remained and became even more advanced.

Now here is what obsidian tells us about their technology,i see that they have updated added low effort mecha creating skill:

The biggest/only logical inconsistency I see there is that the technology used by the Engwithan in the Dyrwood area was less advanced than the technology used in the Deadfire region, but there could be any number of explanations for that from geographical to political/social. Beyond that, there could be time that passed between the construction of the Dywoodan technology and the technology in the Deadfire.

Did you read the quote i copied? The problem is that they have tech at all,how the fuck is being able to do magic and math makes you able to make a fucking Mecha Dragon or GODS for that matter?!?!?!?! We are talking about people in the bronze age,the fucking bronze age!!!

 

[Lyre Mors]

Did you read the quote i copied? The problem is that they have tech at all,how the fuck is being able to do magic and math makes you able to make a fucking Mecha Dragon or GODS for that matter?!?!?!?! We are talking about people in the bronze age,the fucking bronze age!!!

Do you know how magic works in Eora? I mean, I don't. But in a world where magic exists, this isn't something that's going to make me do a double take. How is it inconceivable that their fusion of magical and scientific knowledge made it possible to guide souls in such a way to animate inanimate objects in this fantasy land where magic exists? Their technology is obviously a fusion of magic and science, which is wholly plausible in a setting where magic exists as it does in Eora.

 

[Payd Shell]

I thought that this technology was only really operational by the hands of Thaos. Even if a watcher observed the operations of these machine, or even questioned a soul as to how they worked, this doesn't imply they would have the means necessary to operate them. Remember that people who found these machines didn't understand what they were in the slightest, IIRC. Just that they were ruins and possibly mechanical in nature.

well the machine in Heritage Hill was being used by people that weren't Thaos so there's that I guess

 

[Lyre Mors]

well the machine in Heritage Hill was being used by people that weren't Thaos so there's that I guess

True enough, and thanks for pointing that out. However, the researcher's understanding of the machine was tenuous at best if I recall correctly, which allowed Thaos to manipulate the situation so that the whole ordeal on Heritage Hill occurred in the first place, thus shifting more criticism on the studies of animancers. Thaos sent an agent of the Leaden Key into the tower with specific instructions on how to activate the machine. So indirectly Thaos was the one who started that machine. I can't remember exactly, but I think that agent died at some point through the course of the ordeal - something that was probably part of Thaos' plan to begin with, in order to protect the knowledge of how one operates the machines.

 

[Roguey]

Durance: [looks at god he blew up striding across the landscape] No, we do not.

Took two nukes to cow Japan into submission.

 

[2house2fly]

Did you read the quote i copied? The problem is that they have tech at all,how the fuck is being able to do magic and math makes you able to make a fucking Mecha Dragon or GODS for that matter?!?!?!?! We are talking about people in the bronze age,the fucking bronze age!!!

The mecha dragon and gods are made of magic, so "being able to do magic" seems to pretty much explain it

 

[Lyre Mors]

The mecha dragon and gods are made of magic, so "being able to do magic" seems to pretty much explain it

Exactly. It's the same reason why both Engwithans and animancers are able to create constructs. The Engwithans were essentially a civilization of more adept and powerful animancers.

 

[Chris Avellone]

“Hey Durance, do we know how to kill gods in Eora?”

This. The Godhammer did have this very problem, and I argued against it. Not just the concept, but the lore mechanics beyond it.

Originally, I felt the Godhammer was the biggest signpost for the Gods Aren’t What They Seem (!), which I thought played the arc’s hand too soon, among the other problems – when you establish that the Gods can be blown up before the game begins with a makeshift nuclear warhead, it undermines the threat they’re (supposed to) present.

To explain (or as it was explained to me), the Godhammer was mostly mechanical in nature - this was worse because there wasn’t anything to prevent the idea of hey, let’s build a bunch of God-killer bombs and blow up all the Gods because now there’s a precedent set by others in the game world (who even worse, weren’t even the player doing the bombing, which would have at least been fun - hell, that would even have been a great endgame set-up).

After some debate, at least we made the Godhammer largely spiritual in nature and made it so the process wasn’t a simple build-by-numbers (you needed a bunch of crazy zealots like Durance who are so out of their gourd with hate, you could believe a group of those psychically-damaged nutjobs would fashion something with enough hate to kill a God).

The “spiritual” nature of it was important to me, because it echoed the spell system of the world, and also seemed core to what made the gods what they were – you needed spiritual energy to truly harm them, not a ton of explosives (which again, feels mundane to me, which further undermines the threat the Gods could pose).

This spiritual hate was part of the reason Durance was so over-the-top in some respects. Except for the sweating. The sweating was mostly because I imagined he kept feeling Magran’s fires burning him from the inside.

If you’ve ever read Fred Saberhagen’s Book of Swords (the original trilogy), I thought that trilogy handled the same "taking on the Gods" challenge much better (the 2nd book’s "Godhammer moment" changes the entire world, and it's more impactful because you've been exposed to what the pre-Godhammer world is like: you already know what miserable fucks the Gods are, how powerful/important they are, and how little they care about their worshipers). It’s not great throughout, but I felt the pacing worked.

 

[Darth Roxor]

So whose brilliant idea was it to dump all that shit into the first game's deep lore folder and make some banal shit boring tripe the actual main storyline?

 

[axedice]

"The gods are fake" is especially idiotic, I can't even. What are they trying to say with this?

That some ancient civilization actually became the lizard people controlling the world and then founded illuminati so that no one could discover their secrets?





The overall concept of Eora and its pantheon is pretty good actually. Some nihilistic shitheads found out that there wasn't any deeper meaning to existence, and since they had the means to, they actually genocided a large portion of their society to fuel themselves with godly power and diverted souls to create a cycle of reincarnation that would feed them forever. I think it is implied that the ruling class had the techno-magical capacity to achieve this sort of godhood for a long time, but only went on with the plan once they found out that there was no deeper meaning to life&death, (or that there would be no repercussions from actual deities).

While the nihilistic point of view sounds very stupid for people of reason, we live in a world there are real antinatalists. So maybe they wanted to avoid a similar idiocy. The gods being "fake" could have been an important hinge for the story, had they implied that it was possible to dethrone them through player agency. The fakeness of the gods should also have been a discussion as well. I mean if they walk like a god, talk like a god and have godly powers, then are they not real gods? Sadly none of these themes are explored, probably due to a very real lack of talent.


To answer your original question in the quote, I think Obsidian tried to tell that people will always try to make a meaning of existence, and that forcing your understanding of it onto others is not right. Unfortunately they were never able to achieve this goal with their storytelling.

And what are they trying to say with not being able to defeat Eothas? What is the point of writing this story? What is the conclusion? There are so many questions and none of them the good kind.

This part I agree, not being able to "defeat" Eothas (or the other gods) is a bad conclusion for the story. It could have been a philosophical defeat based on your choices throughout the game, it could have been through combat in the "in-between" with soul power you amassed similar to gods, it could have been another godhammer this time with the help of factions. It could have been a lot of things, yet the lack of talent in Obsidian prevented them from writing anything else, so we have this half-assed story with no satisfying conclusion.


There are so many things done well in deadfire that I can't in good conscience call it a bad game, it's just that the metaplot was so badly executed and disconnected, that the main story became a drag and pulled the rest down with its dullness. It is clear that Obsidian no longer has what it takes to write a story that questions existence, so Deadfire should have omitted all that god stuff and just went along with interfaction politics with a little bit of supernatural conspiracy as a side dish.

 

[Lacrymas]

To answer your original question in the quote, I think Obsidian tried to tell that people will always try to make a meaning of existence, and that forcing your understanding of it onto others is not right. Unfortunately they were never able to achieve this goal with their storytelling.

If this is what they were trying to say, they failed spectacularly. The problem is that it doesn't matter to the setting, nor to the actual narrative of the game, that the gods are created, there is no dramatic potential or sting. That is what I mean with "what are they trying to say?". A conclusion in a fictional story should be about that fictional story first and foremost, having some kind of real life commentary that can be interpreted from that is a bonus. This is also a problem with DF, where there is no real life commentary that can be interpreted, yet it still fails as a conclusion to the story that is being told.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

As far as I understood it,

the Godhammer was being built under Magrans guidance, meaning it uses powerful otherworldly magic and is not something everybody can just build.
It only worked in a very specific context, leading Waidwen into a carefully laid out trap, meaning you cant just go bomb all the Gods. Where are they even located physically? Unless you have manifestation such as Waidwen the Gods in PoE1 are just disembodied voices.
And it didn't literally blow up a God anyway but his worldly avatar, meaning you still can't just go and blow up a God. I interpreted it more like banishing an incarnation than killing a God. Hence people don't know if Eothas is really dead and of course he isn't and returns later.

So I guess I kinda don't see the issue.

 

[MajorMace]

This is a mistake a lot of amateur writers make, the most interesting story is actually in the past or not happening to the protagonist and they only hear of it on the side.

It's only a mistake if it's done poorly.
Dark Souls, Soul Reaver, PST are about that as well, mind you.
You can make a good story which revolves partly or totally on uncovering past events, problem with poe is that it's just a lore filler, a way to give their setting the looks of an actual world and shit. In the french version of POE, books about the saint's war are still in their first translation version, from probably before release : it says the saint's war happened 200 years ago iirc.
They reajusted it for Durance I assume, but through and through they didn't put much care into this aspect of the delivery.

 

[Mortmal]

Anything below PotD is a mistake and invalid.

If you say so , sadly if you look at POE1 stats there's a worryingly huge number of people who did not finish even act 1..There's something very wrong with that.

Sorry to keep posting these but I think this one post is worth it

So basically, he was the wrong person to be in charge of Deadfire. Got it. If there's a POE3, (and at this point, that's far from a given, I think), hopefully they'll find someone more interested in providing an entertaining game than a repudiation of fantasy story arcs and the need for player agency in video games.

Then it's intended as chosen of the gods you are in fact just the errand boy on a ship, the player actions are completely pointless and does not even alter that outcome...I Know BG2 wasn't great literature , but it was miles ahead story wise, i was hooked from the start til the end. Of course it had a big advantage , it was part of the forgotten realms, a setting built from hundreds(thousands?) of novels, guidebooks and adventures sets. Bg2 was completely blending into that.
Story telling is extremely important in a RPG, the most important thing in a rpg according gary gigax(some dude who knew a few things about them), bloating characters sheets with useless feats and talents is not.Too bad josh neglected that.

 

[Payd Shell]

Anything below PotD is a mistake and invalid.

If you say so , sadly if you look at POE1 stats there's a worryingly huge number of people who did not finish even act 1..There's something very wrong with that.

Isn't that the case for almost every game nowadays, though?

 

[Mortmal]

Anything below PotD is a mistake and invalid.

If you say so , sadly if you look at POE1 stats there's a worryingly huge number of people who did not finish even act 1..There's something very wrong with that.

Isn't that the case for almost every game nowadays, though?

Thats true but it little under other rpgs , however there's an even bigger drop later 45.8% act 1, to only 24% act2 its not even mid game. If i look at recently released kingdom come, mid game achievements like sinner are at 49%.

 

[Lacrymas]

We really have to have a captive resident normie to answer these questions for us.

 

[2house2fly]

“Hey Durance, do we know how to kill gods in Eora?”

This. The Godhammer did have this very problem, and I argued against it. Not just the concept, but the lore mechanics beyond it.

Originally, I felt the Godhammer was the biggest signpost for the Gods Aren’t What They Seem (!), which I thought played the arc’s hand too soon, among the other problems – when you establish that the Gods can be blown up before the game begins with a makeshift nuclear warhead, it undermines the threat they’re (supposed to) present.

To explain (or as it was explained to me), the Godhammer was mostly mechanical in nature - this was worse because there wasn’t anything to prevent the idea of hey, let’s build a bunch of God-killer bombs and blow up all the Gods because now there’s a precedent set by others in the game world (who even worse, weren’t even the player doing the bombing, which would have at least been fun - hell, that would even have been a great endgame set-up).

After some debate, at least we made the Godhammer largely spiritual in nature and made it so the process wasn’t a simple build-by-numbers (you needed a bunch of crazy zealots like Durance who are so out of their gourd with hate, you could believe a group of those psychically-damaged nutjobs would fashion something with enough hate to kill a God).

The “spiritual” nature of it was important to me, because it echoed the spell system of the world, and also seemed core to what made the gods what they were – you needed spiritual energy to truly harm them, not a ton of explosives (which again, feels mundane to me, which further undermines the threat the Gods could pose).

This spiritual hate was part of the reason Durance was so over-the-top in some respects. Except for the sweating. The sweating was mostly because I imagined he kept feeling Magran’s fires burning him from the inside.

If you’ve ever read Fred Saberhagen’s Book of Swords (the original trilogy), I thought that trilogy handled the same "taking on the Gods" challenge much better (the 2nd book’s "Godhammer moment" changes the entire world, and it's more impactful because you've been exposed to what the pre-Godhammer world is like: you already know what miserable fucks the Gods are, how powerful/important they are, and how little they care about their worshipers). It’s not great throughout, but I felt the pacing worked.

Shame, the evolution from old ways of superstition and ritual to new ways of science and technology is a core theme of the setting, and having a god literally killed by technology would have been a great defining centrepiece. Having him killed onstead by superstition and ritual undercuts it somewhat, but then strong core themes aren't particularly important I guess.

 

[Mastermind]

Sorry to keep posting these but I think this one post is worth it

Obshitian dug itself into a hole by making the main plot of the first game be about the nature of reality. Save that shit for high level campaigns in Pillars IX where the player is at least a demi-god. They've killed any potential for mystery in the setting because nothing's gonna top knowing the gods are artificial constructs and with it goes any suspense and sense of wonder future games might have. And now they're stuck having to outdo their own grandiosity with every game. There's nothing Sawyer could have done because there is nothing left to do after Pillars 1 shits Eora's deepest secret all over you.

 

[Lacrymas]

Shame, the evolution from old ways of superstition and ritual to new ways of science and technology is a core theme of the setting.

No, it's not.

 

[Payd Shell]

Obshitian dug itself into a hole by making the main plot of the first game be about the nature of reality. Save that shit for high level campaigns in Pillars IX where the player is at least a demi-god. They've killed any potential for mystery in the setting because nothing's gonna top knowing the gods are artificial constructs and with it goes any suspense and sense of wonder future games might have. And now they're stuck having to outdo their own grandiosity with every game. There's nothing Sawyer could have done because there is nothing left to do after Pillars 1 shits Eora's deepest secret all over you.

The knowledge of reality only reaches so far as the engwithians came with their magic science, though. There's ample room to explore this setting. For example, the presence of the fake gods could attract attention from something that's very old and very far away - that is if you want to push the power levels beyond the previous game. There could also be unintended side effects of fucking with reality that just haven't really manifested themselves yet. Or you could tell a more personal story instead.

 

[Mastermind]

The knowledge of reality only reaches so far as the engwithians came with their magic science, though. There's ample room to explore this setting. For example, the presence of the fake gods could attract attention from something that's very old and very far away - that is if you want to push the power levels beyond the previous game.

I already covered this in the part where I said they have to come up with more and more grandiose shit with every subsequent game. Eldritch horrors have charm when you don't really know anything about them. Once you're forced to expose them because the gods are now mundane subjects for the player they just become filler content.

 

[Payd Shell]

The gods in PoE are only mundane because they're fake. We don't know anything more about the nature of reality or the universe the game is embedded in than what the engwithians discovered. The engwithians created a faux reality and forced everyone to play along.

 

[Lacrymas]

Them being "fake" has nothing to do with their mundanity. It's that they are boring, and the more they open their mouths the more boring they become. The setting inhabitants' relationship to the gods is also weird and cringey.