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TL;DW - Moscow still believes that it has the right to dictate the laws, alliances, military size and might, language, and every aspect of Ukrainian society without having to pay for a very costly occupation.

Wasn't it Pascal, the Shield Beaver with the unique Beaver racials and the six fingers feat ?

For the record: While I didn't love The Outer Worlds (1) either, I thought there were decent things in there as well. Overall, I think it's a rather mid title by Obsidian standards though. And one seemingly scared of its own design goals as well. There is "casualization" -- Pentiment, set up as a narrative experience surely isn't a hardcore gamer's game, and that's perfectly fine! It was never conceived as such. And then there is say the aforementioned looting in TOW1 that doesn't even matter as it's this abundant. In a way, it seems Obsidian came out of their crowdfunding stage under the impression that specialization would not be worth it (after Deadfire, see the quote prior about making real money off two PoEs...). Whereas for Warhorse, Larian, Owlcat et all it was the opposite. That said, whilst there were layoffs, Obsidian never cut down solely to the crew doing Pillars 1 back then. IIRC, they were still a studio in the ~100-150 people range at that point.

Finished Soldiers Live. I don't know, I think I like the original 3 books more. There is a dip afterwards that does get better with the later books but it never quite comes back to the level of the first 3. Saying that I will continue reading the new books as they come out. I started immediately with Lies Weeping. Another thing I would say is that while Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen is pretty heavily inspired by the Black Company he does a better job with his characters. You are way more invested in the non PoV characters of the Malazan world.

That was my reaction to when Deadfire launched -- to nowhere near the buzz as PoE. To be fair, Eternity1, unlike Original Sin, was always big time sold on nostalgia, and eventually, that crave for the good ol' days may be fulfilled. Still, in the case of PoE, it's certainly not the "type of game" at fault -- or Owlcat wouldn't have rolled these things plus DLC plus Enhanced Editions en masse from an Eastern European CRPG factory line. :D In the case of TOW, it's not the type of game either, see Fallout New Vegas. What would have bummed me out (and kinda did) with TOW1 is that it was announced as a sort of Vegas-Like project (see the announcement trailers... "From thy builders of Vegas!"). And then was more like a baby's version of an Obsidian game, of one I've played better versions of before (not talking size, but depth). The entire industry is struggling a bit atm though. And if you ask me, the thing to notice recently has been about specilization -- of picking an experience and going all-in on it rather than watering it down so that everybody may be onboard. A game like Kingdom Come would have never seen the light of day at Bioware, Bethesda and Obsidian -- see how Josh had been hoping to make a historical game since forever, but bosses would go: "Nobody would buy that." And even FromSoft exploded by Elden Ring -- a title likewise that would have never seen the light of day at most of the old Western powerhouses of the industry, as deemed as too "inaccessible". These games were allowed to excel at what they were targeting -- and attracted added people simply by doing so, making them curious what's so "special" and "unique" about them. Warhorse have talked about how many history buffs they got onboard who aren't even hardcore gamers, for instance. As a side-effect, Warhorse are now pretty much the only top dogs on the "historical RPG" block too -- there simply is nobody around making a game like them on the scale of them, zero direct competition. Loot and combat and dwarves and elves and Pip-Boys? Dime a dozen. It's actually not just games. See also music, where there are few omnipresent superstars still left that everybody and their cat owns a record of. And rather, everyone tends to build their own streaming playlists, tailored towards them specifically. The market here too has exploded so much that everybody will eventually find something fit to their tastes. (Over 19,000 games released on Steam alone in 2025). One thing is clear though: Chasing trends with dev cycles of 4-7 years ain't gonna cut it. By that point that trend is long old hat. And everybody else chasing it as well may have already picked up what was left of all the buzz once you're finally ready to ship yourself. :D

I'm hoping that Avowed 2 shows the same growth as Outer Worlds 2, but I am concerned that the improvements don't seem to be increasing sales. Although in retrospect, I'm the target audience for these games, and I still played them on Gamepass instead of paying full price. So I think the business model is more an issue than the quality or marketability of the game.

If you take a Tactician/Assassin and do fights solo you can trigger Brilliant via Brillant Tactician nearly every time you go invisible. You don't need Devoted so bad since you already get +4 PEN from Assassinate. The additinal crit damage is nice but not stellar anyway. Yes, but that's only one half. The other one is piling up lashes (from weapon, Hylea's Talons, Belt of Magran's Chosen etc.). Bleeding Cuts is also nice - but the DoT can take some time to kill an enemy and that might be the time he needs to strike you down before the Slippers kick in or you can cast Smoke Veil etc. Fortunately stealth provides you with a 80% recovery bonus that almost nullifies the high recovery from Bleeding Cuts. It's still noticable though. An Assassin should always try to strike and then go invisible (via kill-->slippers or Shadowing Beyond or Smoke Veil) in order to end the encounter so that his resources refill. Then it can be very powerful and fun (if you like the sneaky "Thief™" playstyle). As Tactician/Assassin you can skip the "end combat" thing often enough though and still get Guile back. The best assassination weapon is Dragon's Dowry because of the combo of high base dmg + highest lashes. And also because guns don't have recovery. You can shoot twice (stealth reload bonus of 80%, shoot again) and then vanish. It's a bit frustrating that the best weapons for Assassins are the biggest guns - used a point blank - in general. Spearcaster with the lash enchantment is also good. If it has to be a melee weapon then Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff is also decent because of its lashes and because it has the additional advantage that you don't need to go into engagement once unstealthed (reach weapon). Oathbreaker's End does good dmg with Bleeding Cuts. Effort with Maiming isn't too bad either (raw dmg doesn't stack like Bleedig Cuts though). Engoliero do Espirs: also nice. Less base dmg but if you manage to kill with the opening backstab you'll send out Ghost Blades with all the dmg bonuses of the weapon. Basically just use a two hander with lashes on it (I'll count Bleeding Cuts as a lash since its also a multiplicative dmg boost like elemental lashes are). A suprisingly good assasination weapon is Whispers of the Endless Paths with the Run-Through enchantment. It has very high base damage. But of course you can't combine that with Power Strike because it's its own ability (but you can use it with Takedown Combo if you play an Assassin/Ranger). After a lot of testing with an Assassin some time ago I think I came to the conclusion that the best melee backstab weapon is Concelhaut's Draining Touch (of course only usable by a Spellblade) followed by Chromoprismatic Staff and then Oathbreaker's End (+ Bleeding Cuts) - iirc. If you find it stupid that Backstab favors heavy weapons you can check out the Community Patch in my signature: it changes Backstab from a additive dmg bonus to a flat raw dmg bonus (same numbers for all weapons) which scales with Rogue's Power Level and will generally be a tad higher than a vanilla Backstab with a two handed melee weapon after some PLs (but less than with Dragon's Dowry).