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

[Lacrymas]

My guess is budgetary concerns for why they didn't make the intro playable. Maybe if they didn't put voice acting in the whole game, which is actually detrimental to the finished product as it turns out, they might've had the budget to fix the intro.

 

[Faarbaute]

My guess is budgetary concerns for why they didn't make the intro playable. Maybe if they didn't put voice acting in the whole game, which is actually detrimental to the finished product as it turns out, they might've had the budget to fix the intro.

Then they should have made a different game, with a different scope. These guys are just hacks.

 

[luj1]

In both Pillars game you get WALLS OF TEXT dumped on you that have absolutely NO personal resonance with your character at this point of the game.

This is my main gripe, also can be said for Tyranny. And I love reading...

Pillars 1
Pillars 2
Tyranny
Tides of Numenera
and possibly some Im forgetting

They are all guilty of this. But it's mostly noticeable around Soyer and nu-Obsidian's B-team

>open up the game
>"the Glanfathan pact of the Valirian republics under King roric".... oh fuck off

lack of understanding basic writing principles

 

[luj1]

I don't think PoE 1 had a problem with its opening. You're in a caravan, the narrator sets the scene well

What? You're literally so sick that the caravan has to stop. But then you are sent to combat wolves and find ur own medicine in the woods xD... (while being sick, shivering and sweating)

lmao

 

[roshan]

In both Pillars game you get WALLS OF TEXT dumped on you that have absolutely NO personal resonance with your character at this point of the game.

This is my main gripe, also can be said for Tyranny. And I love reading...

Pillars 1
Pillars 2
Tyranny
Tides of Numenera
and possibly some Im forgetting

They are all guilty of this. But it's mostly noticeable around Soyer and nu-Obsidian's B-team

>open up the game
>"the Glanfathan pact of the Valirian republics under King roric".... oh fuck off

lack of understanding basic writing principles

You can add Shadowrun Hong Kong to that list. Dragonfall was awesome, but Hong Kong was a fucking trainwreck in the writing department.....

 

[mediocrepoet]

What happened to your keep, your soul and all that, what with the god-statue waking up, should have been made into a sequence at the beginning of the game, to give it at least the chance of working as a hook.

Compare it to another mediocre offering in the form of Dragon Age:Origins, and you can clearly see the difference, and see the superiority of the latter delivery.

As a human noble, you actually play through the attack on and subsequent escape from your family's estate. Then you play through the disastrous initial battle with the Darkspawn, and so on. You, the player, are present for these events through your character, there are multiple simultaneous early plot developments, which you play through, that serve as story hooks, and now you have a reason to care about events as they are unfolding.

If DA:O were POE II in this case, the game would begin on the road, after the aforementioned sequence of events had already taken place, with an exposition dump telling you about them, and how much you should care about it.

This is sort of interesting, but I don't know that it would work as written. Certainly not as combat, just because basically you and your guys are all chilling at home and then the statue climbs out of the earth, everything collapses and everyone there dies. It would be a playable "rocks fall, everyone dies" scenario and those tend to piss a lot of people off, myself included.

The cutscene approach is better for a scenario like that imo. Unless they had set it up as some sort of dialogue thing where you're talking about how awesome you are for wiping Thaos out and then the walls start shaking or something, transition to cutscene. It doesn't strike me that that would be any better than what they did.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I don't think PoE 1 had a problem with its opening. You're in a caravan, the narrator sets the scene well

What? You're literally so sick that the caravan has to stop. But then you are sent to combat wolves and find ur own medicine in the woods xD... (while being sick, shivering and sweating)

lmao

Struck me that it was some type of massive diarrhea / stomach flu type deal. They should've at least had some con checks to see if you shit your pants or puked while fighting the wolves and barbarians.

 

[JarlFrank]

They had the opportunity to make the first RPG where you have to roll against shitting your pants, but Obsidian being Obsidian, they blundered it.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

In both Pillars game you get WALLS OF TEXT dumped on you that have absolutely NO personal resonance with your character at this point of the game.

This is my main gripe, also can be said for Tyranny. And I love reading...

Pillars 1
Pillars 2
Tyranny
Tides of Numenera
and possibly some Im forgetting

They are all guilty of this. But it's mostly noticeable around Soyer and nu-Obsidian's B-team

>open up the game
>"the Glanfathan pact of the Valirian republics under King roric".... oh fuck off

lack of understanding basic writing principles

This is why Kingdom Cum was nice - you begin the game as a lazy, illiterate lad who prefers to drink beer and chase skirts than doing some actual work. It's probably the closest I've ver been to an rpg protagonist in any game.

 

[Faarbaute]

What happened to your keep, your soul and all that, what with the god-statue waking up, should have been made into a sequence at the beginning of the game, to give it at least the chance of working as a hook.

Compare it to another mediocre offering in the form of Dragon Age:Origins, and you can clearly see the difference, and see the superiority of the latter delivery.

As a human noble, you actually play through the attack on and subsequent escape from your family's estate. Then you play through the disastrous initial battle with the Darkspawn, and so on. You, the player, are present for these events through your character, there are multiple simultaneous early plot developments, which you play through, that serve as story hooks, and now you have a reason to care about events as they are unfolding.

If DA:O were POE II in this case, the game would begin on the road, after the aforementioned sequence of events had already taken place, with an exposition dump telling you about them, and how much you should care about it.

This is sort of interesting, but I don't know that it would work as written. Certainly not as combat, just because basically you and your guys are all chilling at home and then the statue climbs out of the earth, everything collapses and everyone there dies. It would be a playable "rocks fall, everyone dies" scenario and those tend to piss a lot of people off, myself included.

The cutscene approach is better for a scenario like that imo. Unless they had set it up as some sort of dialogue thing where you're talking about how awesome you are for wiping Thaos out and then the walls start shaking or something, transition to cutscene. It doesn't strike me that that would be any better than what they did.

It is also stupidly written, but that is a separate issue.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It is also stupidly written, but that is a separate issue.

Given the general sentiments ITT and about Obsidian writing in general post-Avellone, I'd say that's the root of the entire issue.

 

[Faarbaute]

Given the general sentiments ITT and about Obsidian writing in general post-Avellone, I'd say that's the root of the entire issue.

Yeah, perhaps, but that is not the issue I'm adressing.

I could easily provide you with a gripping hook for the most stupidly written story ever.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Given the general sentiments ITT and about Obsidian writing in general post-Avellone, I'd say that's the root of the entire issue.

Yeah, perhaps, but that is not the issue I'm adressing.

I could easily provide you with a gripping hook for the most stupidly written story ever.

Possibly, but surely you recognize that providing the hook is part of writing, so unless you're indicating that someone else could've provided the hook to the story, it's rather moot. If they did have someone who could write the hook, why wouldn't they also have that person write a better MQ plot?

 

[Faarbaute]

Given the general sentiments ITT and about Obsidian writing in general post-Avellone, I'd say that's the root of the entire issue.

Yeah, perhaps, but that is not the issue I'm adressing.

I could easily provide you with a gripping hook for the most stupidly written story ever.

Possibly, but surely you recognize that providing the hook is part of writing, so unless you're indicating that someone else could've provided the hook to the story, it's rather moot. If they did have someone who could write the hook, why wouldn't they also have that person write a better MQ plot?

My suggestion is that the lack of an effective hook is due to it being reduced to an exposition dump, rather than something that you get to participate in as a player.

That it is also stupidly written, and wouldn't work, as it is written, as a playable scenario, is a separate point entirely.

 

[General Disarray]

Come to think of it, the new trifecta of shit (in isoRPG space) each boasts its own flavor of shite. Which do you prefer:

- Bland as fuck, mediocre shit with nary a single great element and way too much exposition (Pooplars of Eternity)
- Occasionally good level/combat design completely offset by murderously bad Belgian humor and cartoon level lore (Dipshitty Original Turds and possibly Bear Sex 3)
- Terrible design and writing all around drowning in a sea of wokeness, but with lots of numbers to play with for the autistic munchkins (Poncemakers and Turdfinders)

Me, I spit on all of these and play the good shit (Battle Brothers and Disco Elysium )

Vagrus - The Riven Realms

 

[Roguey]

What happened to your keep, your soul and all that, what with the god-statue waking up, should have been made into a sequence at the beginning of the game, to give it at least the chance of working as a hook.

Compare it to another mediocre offering in the form of Dragon Age:Origins, and you can clearly see the difference, and see the superiority of the latter delivery.

As a human noble, you actually play through the attack on and subsequent escape from your family's estate. Then you play through the disastrous initial battle with the Darkspawn, and so on. You, the player, are present for these events through your character, there are multiple simultaneous early plot developments, which you play through, that serve as story hooks, and now you have a reason to care about events as they are unfolding.

If DA:O were POE II in this case, the game would begin on the road, after the aforementioned sequence of events had already taken place, with an exposition dump telling you about them, and how much you should care about it.

This is sort of interesting, but I don't know that it would work as written. Certainly not as combat, just because basically you and your guys are all chilling at home and then the statue climbs out of the earth, everything collapses and everyone there dies. It would be a playable "rocks fall, everyone dies" scenario and those tend to piss a lot of people off, myself included.

The cutscene approach is better for a scenario like that imo. Unless they had set it up as some sort of dialogue thing where you're talking about how awesome you are for wiping Thaos out and then the walls start shaking or something, transition to cutscene. It doesn't strike me that that would be any better than what they did.

Yeah, there's absolutely nothing to play here. A statue wakes up and kills everybody, including you. A series of narrated still images works better for me than an in-engine scripted sequence.

 

[luj1]

The statue stuff was cringe. Shameful lack of creativity.

 

[Quillon]

What happened to your keep, your soul and all that, what with the god-statue waking up, should have been made into a sequence at the beginning of the game, to give it at least the chance of working as a hook.

Compare it to another mediocre offering in the form of Dragon Age:Origins, and you can clearly see the difference, and see the superiority of the latter delivery.

As a human noble, you actually play through the attack on and subsequent escape from your family's estate. Then you play through the disastrous initial battle with the Darkspawn, and so on. You, the player, are present for these events through your character, there are multiple simultaneous early plot developments, which you play through, that serve as story hooks, and now you have a reason to care about events as they are unfolding.

If DA:O were POE II in this case, the game would begin on the road, after the aforementioned sequence of events had already taken place, with an exposition dump telling you about them, and how much you should care about it.

This is sort of interesting, but I don't know that it would work as written. Certainly not as combat, just because basically you and your guys are all chilling at home and then the statue climbs out of the earth, everything collapses and everyone there dies. It would be a playable "rocks fall, everyone dies" scenario and those tend to piss a lot of people off, myself included.

The cutscene approach is better for a scenario like that imo. Unless they had set it up as some sort of dialogue thing where you're talking about how awesome you are for wiping Thaos out and then the walls start shaking or something, transition to cutscene. It doesn't strike me that that would be any better than what they did.

I've already stated my gripe with the beginning more than once:

Spoiler

I re-downloaded the game for the new dlc and tried to play through the first island.

Uninstalled before finishing berath's conversation...

Something about this game is really repulsive

The intro is very bad. It's like they read a book on what not to do when making an intro, but someone had covered up the "not"

When they were saying that it had "cool beginning" a year from release, I was thinking of the game's starting in Caed Nua's ruins, then some port town in Vailia to get a ship before Deadfire but their thought of cool was "moving platforms"

To add to that, the 'death' character creation and the opening up on a ship are a large departure in tone. If the tutorial had been set in Caed Nua it might have grounded the game into PoE1 better. Instead, I'm on a ship I never had, surrounded by crew I don't know (except for Eder) yet seem like I should, and in a land entirely unlike what I was before with no transition. Throw in a more lighthearted dialogue and it just shit the bed right at the beginning for me.

Yep. I thought we'd play the caed nua destruction part, then go to a port town map and acquire a ship, crew etc. instead we're robbed of all that. Its like starting Kingmaker after getting the barony.

so yeah after the destruction cutscene we coulda started in caed nua ruins, then meet with Eder/Aloth(one or both coulda been on the way to visit us already) and go to that port town in Valia to get a ship, we coulda rejoined with Pallegina/introduced to VTC there instead, also Xoti & co trying to find a ship to take them to Deadfire etc. They coulda done this instead of Port Maje, but Eder played the adventure's beginning off screen and it feels like the game starts 1/3 of the way for us.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Sure, they could've delivered any number of other games and storylines that they didn't. That's riveting stuff.

Anyway, I expect that they were looking for a way to justify dropping the character's power for a new game after deciding that there wasn't much room to grow if they brought it in at the former. As I recall, they actually said as much, but I can't be arsed to look for a source on that.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I think statue and ship was an okay idea, just execution is horrible.

 

[Sweeper]

I think statue and ship was an okay idea, just execution is horrible.

Yup, there's nothing wrong with a starting a game off with high stakes, and a God statue stomping your ass right at the start is as high stakes as it gets, I also think the lore (which I liked, sue me) about Eothas and the Saint's War from the first game really helps in selling Eothas in the second one. Problem is Deadfire's story went absolutely nowhere (just like Poe) and ended on a cliffhanger. And then there's the setting. Say what you will about PoE, but the Dyrwood felt like a real country with a real history. Some might have found it bland, but that complaint led to an overcorrection in Deadfire that actually made it worse. Fucking gay furry pirates, Italians, Polynesians (oooh exotic) and muh colonialism.

Both games are heavily flawed, and not in the flawed gem kind of way. The biggest problem is that Obsidian managed to come up with a pretty good concept for the plot, but they didn't know what to actually do with it. In the first game your soul gets awakened (kinda cool) and then you spend the entire game chasing after the guy who awakened you, about whom you don't really know anything, and never find out much until the very end. In the second game the same thing happens, except now it's a God.

You can add small diamonds to a big pile of shit, at the end of the day it's still a big pile of shit.

 

[Desiderius]

Gods that rise from the dead are *problematic*.

Blue Easter yadda, yadda, yadda

 

[A-Minish]

Finaly finished my probable last play of the game with 8 character, PoTD upscale, level 20 from the start, a few mods, a few challenges(death after 3 sec of being knocked down and weapon/armor durability) and two of the 4 big Bosses killed. Those last bosses forced me to rethink my group and retrain them at least. I only one I could not beat is the Ooze and the Iron giant I just had enough of the game already.

I remembered the main god plot was badly executed and yeah it still is despite Woedica trying explaining things to you and the DLCs on top of it. It is just felt out-of-place or added at the last minutes.
At this point of the story there should have been a holy war between those whom, more or less, ethicaly side with Eothas(Galawain, Magran, Abydon) and those whom stricktly oppose it. The Deadfire archipelagos should have been wrecked by those conflicts and with death left and right as the different churchs clashes. The scenes with the Pantheons probably should have been more about the why Eothas could be right more than anything, it would have aligned with their depication in the first game. Given they have previously shown they are not beneath burning, squishing or murdering each other in the past. Plus the the Forgotten sanctum DLC gives us a good idea of HOW MUCH those assholes rewrote history, I would not be surprised if they already murdered one if their fellwo Gods and made redacted it completely from history afterward.

I whished they scrapped it entirely and created a simple adventure in the Deadfire or elsewhere with a new characher. The DLCs were more interesting for me than the main plot. The Galawain one was pure combat faggotery but fun nontheless, I just wished thay added a bit more CYOA/text events with it.

The Forgotten sanctum was probably the best in my eye so far. Very telling about the Pantheon but also gave me the will to see more of what is behind the curtain. I collected enough evidences in the archives to royaly fuck up the world and provok Saint-Bartelemy massacres on a mass scale lol(Burn Eora, BURN), too bad it had no CONSEQUENCES.

Another thing I noted is that even if I like the combat system(not the skill system though, fuck it), having to recast many capacities over the length of a long PoTD upscaled fight is honestly as tedious as pre-buffing in in 3.5 D&D or Pathfinder. Not as balanced as someone would think. I know I can at least set the AI to do most of my work for me but it has its limits too. I did not have the same experience in the first game despite the kraken, Eyeless, Archmages and some dragons giving me a hard time with the same kind of difficulty and a worse party composition.

Oh and my game-SSD died while playing, I think he wanted to tell me something

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

At least in Deadfire et all, only some of the writing is surplus. "Filler" and "surplus" are basically Owclat's main company line -- but then they wouldn't be able to churn out three 100 hour epics in the span of half a decade, countless DLC and Enhanceds to boot. All apparently rolling straight from the Eastern European CRPG factoryline. (I actually really like the better bits of their games, but DAMN are they in for the grind and copypaste, so frustrating).

Deadfire actually tried to go with a "quality over quantity" approach as to encounters. Sawyer even encouraged his designers to ask themselves what the purpose of a specific encounter was. E.g.: "This fight is meant to introduce the local fauna." Though you can finish the game easily without killing like a 1,000 guys and critters (rather low end for the type), Deadfire is still a murder hobo sim, mind. But if the likes of WOTR and Kingmaker would include save stats, the counter for "enemies axed" would run into an integer error and re-start at zero by about Chapter 1,5 in each of them. And you can bet your ass that few of those enemies are part of a lovingly hand-crafted encounter type or even genuine setpiece. To quote Eric Fenstermaker: "Balancing campaign length and gameplay polish on a budget is a zero-sum trade-off." It sure looks like it. Whether in Eastern Europe or else.


Re: Piratey theme as a possible factor in commercial underperformance: This is the only genre left standing where setting a project during the zombie postapocalypse or WWII would be seen as a major risk. Dire.

 

[vazha]

Gentlemen, need your advice.
How to make Marukh Amanth (the soulbound dagger that instakills near death enemy once per rest) work? I ve bound it to Maia, the sacrifice bit in description is unclickable, I am fully rested / wailing at that huge mud elemental megaboss thingie (the one that splits in two on death, which is precisely what I d like to avoid), but the dagger does nothing despite hitting it over ten times or more (the boss is near death). Any insights? Its not fully unlocked if that matters? I am on thr last update.