hamskii

This is a good idea for a thread. Modding companions into the game, btw, shouldn't be too difficult. The main difficulty at the moment comes from the fact that all the environments are hand-drawn, so there isn't an easy way to create maps. But editing existing maps, adding NPC's, and adding conversation nodes for reactivity throughout the game should be possible for someone with the know-how. The reason I say this is because FNV's very active modding community have created quite a few custom companions, and it would be cool to see the same thing from PoE. I want to add a couple of thoughts (actually, thoughts from Chris Avellone) from pre-release. Namely, this blog post on companion characterisation and a backer update that covers companion design as one of its topics. I thought it might be more interesting to see how Obsidian design their companions, so that any player-designed ones fit into the game world more seamlessly. There's also this hilarious and thoughtful backer update by Eric Fenstermaker. One major thing mentioned in these updates that I feel that the suggestions in this thread are lacking is a description of the companions' internal conflicts, how these conflicts are examined/resolved by their quests and the game's narrative, and how those conflicts reflect on the overall themes of the game and the player's own quest. How, for example, does this character react to the revelation that the gods don't exist? To that end, may I suggest a modified template, based on the briefs used to summarise the existing companions (the example I'll use is Aloth): But what are the game's central themes? My personal feeling is that a lot of the game's narrative is tied up with knowledge, how to obtain it, and whether it holds the answers. This is appropriate as the setting is in the embryonic stages of its own scientific revolution. Nearly every companion's personal journey has elements of this: Kana's is most explicit, but it also features prominently in Sagani, Edér, and the Grieving Mother's quests. It is maybe most obvious in the animancy aspect of the storyline, but it also surfaces elsewhere. Another theme I have noticed is faith, in the gods or in authority in general, and the ways that doubting your own faith can motivate your behaviour (most notable with Thaos and Iovara, but also in CNPC's such as Hiravias and Aloth). There are a couple of other articles I've seen written by people who most likely have a much better idea of what they're talking about than myself, namely here and here. But maybe we should be ignoring these articles and my own thoughts—one of the things that player-created companions offer is a unique opportunity to have those companions reflect their creator's own interpretation of the game's themes. I may add my own ideas for companions later. I have a couple of ideas for characters that I'd like to explore, but I'm very busy at the moment and haven't had the time to develop them (besides, my field isn't writing, or even the arts in general—this is very much a hobby for me). Other resources: RPG Stack Exchange

NOTE: POTENTIAL SPOILERS ITT. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. So I was reading through the CE strategy guide after I finished my playthrough, and I noticed there were a couple of things in Durance and GM's stories that I hadn't encountered, or even seen hinted at. Like, at all. One of them was pretty major, namely the reason that Grieving Mother is called as such (iirc it is implied in-game that she has forgotten herself, and not explored further). It's possible that I just somehow managed to pick the wrong conversation options or otherwise somehow not satisfied the requirements to get these stories, but being as I hadn't seen any hint of them at all, I thought I'd post here. The guide has this to say about Durance's character, and his internal conflict: Similarly, for the Grieving Mother: These characters' stories seem to have substantially changed between the time that the guide was written, and release (so, potentially fairly late in development). Here is a list of the things that I have found to be inconsistent with the story I experienced in my playthrough: In my playthrough, GM never made a comment about Durance, or vice-versa (although it would make sense that Durance would not initially address GM). In-game, Durance does not seem to initially be aware that his colleagues were killed. This is a revelation to him relatively near the end of the game. Grieving Mother is not blamed for the birth of Hollowborn children, but fears that she will be blamed, and her story is based around the steps she took to ensure that she would not be blamed. There are hints of ending the Hollowborn crisis causing "other problems", which was not implied in the final game. The fact that Durance's soul is damaged (and he is therefore undetectable to Magran) in-game would be totally explained by the fact that it was damaged by the GM. In the release version, Durance does not seem to be aware that his soul is damaged. I think it is explained by Durance saying that while the rest of his colleagues were killed by the Godhammer, he survived and his soul was only partially destroyed. There are no mention of GM's children in the game. This is the big one! Interestingly, I managed to dig up this interview with Chris Avellone before release. It's quite a long interview, so I'll quote the relevant part:

Yes, according to the strategy guide, there are three:

Also having to shelf it until I can get out of Raedric's hold have a week off starting Thursday, so hopefully it'll be ready by then!

Does anyone know if they actually made it into the game, though, demoted to extra? I'm kind of curious myself...

I don't agree with you, but your post seriously made me laugh!

I'm having a slightly different issue - just read through the first half of the posts here and didn't see anyone mention it. Could be because I'm using a 64-bit machine. I'm in the Raedric's hold dungeons (all of my saves), and when I try to use an entrance/exit I get...nothing happen. My character walks up to the little circular button with the picture of the door/stairs, and that's it. Can't use any of the exits (I have the rusty key in my stash, but it doesn't seem to open the door in the eastern portion of the map. Deleting Raedric's hold from my saves didn't work, and neither did "AreaTransition AR_0705_Gilded_Vale North 1" (no command AreaTransition accepting 3 parameters exists, apparently), but "iroll20s" followed by "AreaTransition AR_0705_Gilded_Vale 1" *did* work. But now my save is permanently compromised w.r.t. Steam achievements, etc.. Does anyone know a way of un-flagging a save after enabling cheats.

Have you always wanted your Watcher to look like Yvonne Strahovski, or Seth Green? If so, this might be the post for you! I cropped all the characters from Andrew Ryan's amazing Dragon Effect pieces to the appropriate proportions for PoE. Art credit obviously goes to him, and the characters all belong to BioWare. I also threw in some Dragon Age: Origins concept art because, hey, why not? Previews: And finally: link.