.jpg.ce846aae50e732dc4985eb712252381f.jpg)
Fiaryn
-
Posts
99 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by Fiaryn
-
-
Disappointing for a setting where one of the questions is whether the gods have divine mandate or should they. Especially since my protagonist is a priest of Eothas who thinks that gods are not needed. Now you are just kind of inverted Thaos… Maybe that was the intention but I don't like it either way. Waaay too railroady for my tastes. I'll try to ignore it as hard as possible, I guess.
The thing is, whether they're artificial beings or not does not change the fact that they're (almost) exactly as powerful as they claim to be.
-
4
-
-
I don't know why anyone cares that internet strangers have heated opinions about videogame romances.
-
Reddit, mostly. I am not entirely surprised that they were wrong.
I appreciate the clarification.
-
Hi for those who've done the testing, I've read that Monks automatically get the benefit of Two Weapon Style with their fists. Is this also true of Spiritshift and claws, or do I need to pick up the ability myself?
-
I have to wonder about the necessity of ranged for Helwalker. Would it be viable to lean on Iron Wheel and, as an example, Bear shapeshift at the start of combat to compensate for damage taken until the crowd thins enough that it's safe to assume the offensive modal and Cat form?
-
Shattered Pillar is definitely the safe option in many cases, but there's an argument to be made for taking the risks of Helwalker.
The much lower maximum Wound capacity of Shattered Pillar means you're not going to be able to achieve the full potential of Duality of Mortal Presence modals.
Which is not to say Shattered Pillar isn't good, but you ARE giving something up for the ease of use of gaining wounds from dealing damage.
-
We will probably never get the full story on this, so I find it kind of useless to speculate on whatever deals or lackthereof surrounded Avellone's departure.
I will say that
A) It seems kinda suspect that the guy claims his beef is purely with upper management in one breath and indirectly accuses pretty much everyone working there of rank incompetence immediately prior to that. It's a cowardly kind of passive aggressiveness, and it doesn't really reflect well on him.
B) If this is really about revealing corporate wrongdoing, why are we taking this to RPG Codex, a website well known for it's population of alt-right grognards? Why not actual journalists? Is he worried that Obsidian, the company not all that long ago on the verge of going out of business pre-Pillars, is going to...what exactly? Use it's limitless warchest to hush all the journalists?
That said I'm not willing to discard the possibility that his allegations are partially or fully true. Just because he's doing this in an incredibly ill advised way doesn't mean he's wrong.
But it does give reason to doubt.
-
Liara is a pretty good character...in the second game and onwards. She is functionally a completely different person in the first game and, yes, kind of awful nerd bait in how she's written.
OH SHEPARD WON'T YOU TEACH ME HOW TO LOVE??? I AM SO NAIVE AND NERDY.
-
1
-
-
I wonder since Eothas will be main focus of Deadfire, did spending time in Waidwens body and godbomb destroying his host and damaging his soul cause Eothas change. Cause the way trailer has him come across as looking for vengance. I wonder if changes made him more alive.
Im guessing reason he went to Deadfire Archipelago was to rebuild himself or cause east of it is unknown areas that Ondra stops other getting by, which is likely the area where all of gods are physically located at.
What makes you think Eothas is motivated by revenge?
Or to get more to the point, have you seen the character quotation Josh tweeted regarding Eothas? It casts that theory into doubt.
-
There's a simple reason why Might is superior.
-
@Fiaryn
in BG2 in regards to scope, there‘s Jaheira and then there‘s the rest. If it‘s how Amentep said then that‘s a disappointment since you'll have only 7 chars in BG2 scope. If it‘s so that Deadfire companions mean Jaheira and sidekicks mean the other characters in BG2 then that would be super. As it is, if memory serves right, all characters in BG2 except Minsc have their miniquest (even Cernd – starts off at Waukeens promenade). Jaheira is loaded with quests and she‘s really above everyone else. All of the BG2 chars have IMO same amount of 'inter-banter'.
Saying IMO doesn't make a thing true. There are vast gulfs in how fleshed out the BG2 characters are, Valygar/Mazzy/Cernd are some of the easy examples of "barely any banter". This is functionally similar to the difference between a Companion and a Sidekick, remember that Sidekicks do have a quest where you acquire them they just don't have anything beyond that, the difference is that BG2 doesn't tell you which is which and if you got attached to a character with barely any reactivity...well, that's a shame.
Pillars is being upfront about what you're getting by contrast. We knew from the start that we were only getting 7 fully fleshed out Companions, people weren't listening.
-
4
-
-
I don't know why anyone is particularly surprised. Sidekicks were sold, from the beginning, as fairly stripped down Companions that add a little bit of flavor to the world by their concept but are explicitly Not Fully Fledged Companions. The comparison made by Josh was to characters in Baldur's Gate 2. Baldur's Gate 2, functionally, has Companions and Sidekicks it just doesn't tell you which is which. Cernd is blatantly a Sidekick. Dude has little to no banter or reactivity compared to say Minsc or Jaheira. Minsc and Jaheira are Companions. The point of the stretch goal was to add those minor flavor characters but to be explicit about the fact that they are Cernds.
By all indications they're still going to have SOME, or how else would you have Rekke babbling at you in a language nobody understands and yet has also been hinted by Josh as technically decipherable by an obsessive enough fan? But they are still Cernds.
-
7
-
-
None, animancy is a threat to the gods much like natural philosophy was a threat to Christianity. No paladin would take up animancy as a cause.
However, a monk with a heretical philosophy might take up the cause of animancy if he believed that the practice and studies of animancy advanced both spiritual and societal advancement.
Just a historical point. Christianity wasn't anti-natural philosophy. They were in fact large funders (the biggest at several points) of it and much the the technology and science of Europe saved during the Middle Ages was by priests and monks. The church vs science thing came after the time period poe is roughly set in. Of course the Pillars gods want knowledge hidden
Not all of them. The only ones that make a huge deal about it as a general thing are Wael and Ondra. The others mostly just don't want it known they're animantic constructs and some are willing to risk that knowledge spreading simply because it's in their nature to do so (Abydon, Galawain, Magran).
I don't know Magran seemed pretty on board with Woedica's plan. You may be right about the other two though. Abydon is progress right and wanted to save the Engwithans? (though that may have just been because he liked old traditions) I don't know enough about Galawain.
My personal impression of the Magran/Woedica alliance was that it was a very brief alliance of convenience where Magran was used as a patsy by Woedica, fooled into thinking Eothas' entire agenda was an invasion of the Dyrwood, which Magran saw as her personal playground. When she found out what was actually going on it was too late and she had to cover up the Godhammer'd mess. I could be totally wrong and I fully expect more light (heh) to be shed on the entire Saint's War debacle in Deadfire. (In fact personally I suspect Eothas WANTED to be killed, like Durance speculates at one point, but that's another topic...)
Abydon is the god of industry and was also the god of preservation (and may yet be again depending on your choices). Improvement through craft and labor is in his nature, and as independent as the Gods are they can't seem to totally override their initial purpose. The whole "preservation" aspect of his portfolio also means he can't stand for any discovered knowledge to ever be wiped out, even at the possible cost of his own life.
Magran is the Goddess of Fire, War, and significant for our purposes here: Revolution. Kith discovering and altering their very natures through animancy is, again, something she has to support, as it's the most fundamental revolution imaginable.
Galawain supports animancy as has been said, because the search for knowledge is another hunt.
One quibble here: I think you're severely underestimating the Goddess of War if you think she was the patsy in the arrangement with Woedica. If anything I'd say Woedica was the one being used, look at how things unfolded: Magran gets to effectively assassinate her theological rival Eothas and come out smelling like roses. Then she just turns on Woedica when the opportunity presents itself. Seems pretty tactical to me.
-
1
-
-
****ing hell. DLC largely exists because you need to make content freezes in order to establish the project's scope. A ton of potential content is devised during pre-planning, content that looks to be increasingly un-viable is cut as the project advances.
Josh Recently had a great discussion about crunch and over-time and how you can actually loose productivity from Crunching. So to avoid those scenarios you need to establish a realistic scope of the project and design the project in a way where you can cut away content in order to salvage the major and most important parts of a project.
Once the artists and designers are done with the main-game and the game is moving into it's final development and testing stages. They can then jump back into the production pipeline on either new content (so they aren't idle) or pickup where they left off on cut content (once again, to not be idle.) That content will never be ready for the final game, but it was selectively cut because it was some form of side-content.
Obsidian also knew in advance that they we're making DLC for this game, so it's no surprise that they might over-plan side content, with the the anticipation that some of it would be cut and would be reworked into sizable meaty chunks of content that could come out later. At least this way whatever future content that they come out with, it's gone through a degree of work and refinement during the largest pre-planning stages. Just as all world builders should do, you design more than you write about.
Let's not imply cutting content is a way to create "to be sold later DLC content." Let's not wax-concerns over some none-existent dubious nature of Obsidian's development.
Hmmm this is a good post about how game development actually works BUT have you considered that I have nebulously defined tummyfeels of outrage that must be heard
The tummyfeels Mason!
-
2
-
-
From what I get Josh wanted to try new things for Deadfire or even Pillars. Old-school fans and Obsidian head were against it because they wanted the game to be successful. Now that Deadfire is done Josh can work on his take on pnp rpgs and talk about whatever he thinks about crpgs freely.
I'm all in for experimentation in rpgs but not for the sake of it. Most games that tried weird stuff (like Undertale or Stick of Truth that Josh refers, for instance) I wouldn't categorizing them as rpgs even, since there is no roleplay involved - just interesting ideas in general. Funny enough, though, as far as roleplay is concerned, I believe Pillars and New Vegas have done the best in the entire crpg history up to now. Pillars is a traditional game, by Sawyer terms.
My 2 cents:
There is no ultimate definition of role playing game
For me, RPGs have usually the following things:
( no specific order, not a complete list, there will be exceptions)
- You have one or more characters in this game, usually they are humanoid.
- There is a main story ( and maybe side stories) and you lead your char through this story.
- Your character(s) get stronger during the game.
- You have stats and equipment.
- You talk to other chars and there is lots of text in general.
- There are quests and you get rewards for doing them.
- There is combat and success in combat depends on your stats, equipment and tactics.
By my definition, "classical" RPGs like BG or PoE, JRPGS like Final Fantasy and "weird stuff" like undertale or south park are all Role playing games.
And now comes the most importent thing:
I do not care if a computer game is considered a role playing game according to the definition of you, me or anybody else. The most importent game for me is that I enjoy playing the game. Many games that I like have been called RPG by many other people, so it looks like I really like RPGs.
But I like also many games that are definitely not an RPG and there are also tons of bad RPGs I would never play.
Even this relatively broad definition fails because most would consider Dark Souls an RPG and it doesn't meet a number of those criteria.
I think I've almost never seen a list of characteristics for RPGs that actually withstands scrutiny, so it seems to be more of a an arbitrarily decided upon "feel" than an actual designator of useful characteristics.
-
2
-
-
Sounds like they're basically doing the New Vegas model, and New Vegas had fantastic DLC so yeah sure why not.
-
1
-
-
The main game in Pillars of eternity one was incredibly lacking before the expansions, for example the second city was an absolute joke
The negative users on this forum can heckle all they like as per usual because they are gaming addicts who spend 5000 hours playing one game and have no life
but history does not lie
"The first game had a rushed final act, therefore three DLC planned means the second game will be rushed"
That does not logically follow, no.
New Vegas had Honest Hearts, Dead Money, Old World Blues, and Lonesome Road. All of which were substantial. And I don't think anyone would claim the base game was hurting for content. It may be that game development is, in fact, not a series of binary IF THEN statements.
They already gave away there would be DLC in the original kickstarter the only question is what formatting relative to size of installments.
-
7
-
-
I'm not really sure Eora would go through an outright enlightenment. They already have less restrictions on heresy and there is already a pretty significant number of scholars that seem to use a tangible scientific method (though it is a tad... flawed, so was a lot of the early scientific revolution).
Frankly I think they're just a working internal combustion engine away from an industrialization. However, that could take anywhere from 50 to 500 years depending on what amounts to luck.
Anyway, in a fantasy universe, a culture doesn't really *have* follow the normal cultural changes which happened in reality. Say, instead of an enlightenment, a culture could turn into some sort of theocracy which declared machines holy instruments of the divine and only allowed priests to learn about and operate them. Likewise, steps in the real technological development could in theory be bypassed (electricity discovered and utilized before internal combustion engines by some sort of soul-powered technology).
Pillars of Eternity is already about Enlightenment/Post-Enlightenment thought and philosophy, delivered through heavy use of fantasy metaphor.
-
Shifter/Helwalker multiclass main.
Eder and Pallegina because besties 4 lyfe. Xoti because I need a Priest, specifically a Priest who will antagonize Eder since that seems to be a class feature and Durance isn't around sooooooo...
The fifth slot will rotate between Aloth/Serafen/Maia based on mood, whimsy, the alignment of the stars, and my shipping grid t...tactical evaluations.
-
None, animancy is a threat to the gods much like natural philosophy was a threat to Christianity. No paladin would take up animancy as a cause.
However, a monk with a heretical philosophy might take up the cause of animancy if he believed that the practice and studies of animancy advanced both spiritual and societal advancement.
Neither Paladins nor Monks are religiously motivated by definition in Pillars of Eternity.
They can be motivated by religious ideology but the only unifying characteristic is that they are zealots of an ideology at all, secular or theological it doesn't matter which.
I'm guessing you didn't notice that not a single playable Paladin order in the game is a religious order lol.
-
In short: We're not quite there yet. Eora is a mid to late 17th century-ish early modern era setting. We're going to be seeing some of the dark side of what precisely that means in Deadfire, with colonialism in the archipelago. The industrial revolution is still a ways out.
-
Given the time period of PoE1, the Gods and the truth behind them seems to be an elaborate metaphor for the Enlightenment and the social forces acting against it. Which is to say, by creating the Gods the Engwithans created an extremely elaborate form of cultural imperialism. The propagation of Engwithan values on the whole world by creating divine authority figures to assert those values as correct. Skaen and Woedica are the best example of this, Skaen seems to have been created for the express purpose of delegitimizing rebellion against despotic monarchy/aristocracy and to serve as a sort of pressure release valve. The aristocrat does not need to say "Hail Woedica" in every breath to demonstrate that aristocracy/despotic monarchy derives legitimacy from Woedica, it is simply an understood fact of life. By virtue of Woedica's very existence, the notion of a world without despotic monarchy/hierarchical aristocracy is one the majority of the world cannot conceive of. Consider Nietzsche's meditations on the end of God as a foundation for moral philosophy, and how that terrified him/how it seemed an impossible feat to articulate a system of ethics without God, and you start to grasp the ramifications of the final revelation of Pillars of Eternity.
The greater significance of the revelation of the Gods as artificial is not really about them, but rather that the ideas and social concepts they embody are not eternal and necessary if the Gods are man made.
-
I don't have the Beta, but I'm curious if anyone's tried something along the lines of Shifter/Helwalker Nature Godlike? It seems like the +2 Power Level from Nature Godlike would go well with the Might bonus from having wounds, and effects like Dance of Death. A little bit living on the edge, but possibly fun!
-
Alright by digging around in the text files of the game I've found a string that looks promising. Apparently you can make an argument to the Eyeless that people went mad over the death of the Duc, and that there'd be even more chaos if they knew one God had killed another. The trick is I'm not sure how to determine what makes that conversation option possible. Anyone with any insight on how to confirm something like that in the game files?
When I did the quest I'd already finished the hearing so you'd think I'd be able to select that but maybe there's more to it. Maybe I need to progress to the point that the riots die down to trigger it as a dialogue option?
-
1
-
* Spoiler* - How can you come back as a champion of _____ if you're a priest of another god?
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted · Edited by Fiaryn
Well, the Wheel does seem to be a physical thing even if the Wheel itself is mostly metaphor. There is no actual literal Wheel, but souls do get drawn through a sort of planetary circulatory system known as adra. What Thaos is referring (with flowery language) to is the known, documented phenomenon whereby souls fragment, splinter, and grind down to nothing over successive incarnations. Rymrgand and Berath were set in place to personify and embody processes that (as far as we know) happen regardless.
Where exactly the adra leads is another issue altogether.
I don't think the point requires any further articulation. If something specific confuses you, let me know.