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DaveDanger

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Posts posted by DaveDanger

  1. I'm sure it mostly comes down to expense. There must have been big cost savings with all the text description instead of needing an army of animators to put together cinematics. Plus only having to show art from one angle means you don't have to do as much detail work.

     

    In a world where Obs has a much larger budget, would people here want to play a more fancy cinematic game a la Mass Effect set in the Pillars world? They've gone so far down the isometric/text-heavy route that it would be a big departure from the original. Like the difference between DA:O and DA:I, but even more pronounced. I would guess that would be a controversial choice. Maybe there's room for both?

  2.  

    Endurance and Health bars are meant to complement the supplies resource management for resting. What makes it seem redundant is the fact that resting can be done with not much consequence. It kinda ties in the Health aspect as well as the the per-rest abilities aspect.I have previously suggested ways to make the resource management stricter eg. make some dungeons un-escapeable once entered so the supplies management is more crucial. Then came the objections as this would legitimately have a game-over effect, in which one might need to reload before entering the dungeon if the supplies was wrongly managed. Note that there are some situations where this is already present in the game itself, eg. The drop to lv5 of Endless Path via pit or the final dungeon of Sunless Shadow.At this point, you can also place self-restriction on camping.

    Sounds good to me. How about making camping supplies finite in potd - they never restock. And all inns are closed for renovation. That would sure shake things up

     

     

    OR!

     

    You can camp a much as you want but there is a small chance each time that you will be killed by one of those ax murderers that always seems to target campers.

  3. I'm not inside the main dungeon yet but my party is Eder, Devil, Kana, Zahua, Aloth. Every few area transitions they talk to each other. New companions talk to each other and to old companions. Old companions have new things to say as you walk through expansion levels, too, and as you talk to NPCs. Of those, only the dialogue when speaking to other NPCs doesn't seem to be voiced, which would've been nice, but at least there are new lines there.

     

    Pillars seems to use a limited number of voice actors, which makes sense on a small budget. You'd have to expect that cost was a limiting factor here. Expansions only sell a fraction of what the original game sells, and Obsidian did this one without asking for more money for it.

  4. I really like the Attack of Opportunity mechanic in the game, it requires you to do a little thinking ahead. However, I think Disengagement attacks should not be possible while spellcasting. I notice it a lot when I try to get out of an AoE an enemy spellcaster is casting while I'm engaged in combat with him. If I withdraw my melee fighters out of the AoE the spellcaster gets AoOs on them while casting his spell. Seems to me his hands should be busy....

    Cool idea.
  5. Has anyone seen Eder's quest through to the end? I'm playing a Cipher and chose that option, but there were two others that were like [REQUIREMENT NOT MET]. Is there something you can find out through the story or do you have to pick like Female Orlan Cleric of Magran or something to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

    I went to a cipher in Defiance Bay. The object doesn't have enough info to satisfy Eder's needs, and that is just part of the story.

  6.  

     

    To Thaos we were just another peon.  To Sarevok we were some mofuggin kin who just wrecked all his plans and needed to be murdered ASAP. To Irenicus we were some mofuggin bhaalspawn who killed his sister and had the last part of the soul he needs.

     

    It would've been nice if the final moments gave a little more thought to the life in progress and didn't dedicate the climax 100% to events that we had very little to do with.  The present life was trivialized by the previous life's story. 

     

    Interesting writing style as far as role playing goes, probably would've benefited from Thaos having a bigger presence / making it more personal.

     

    The player doesn't choose to be related to sarevok, to kill Irenicus' sister, or to be a bhaalspawn. Those are all equivalent to past life stories since they happen before the game's events. Sure, they happened in the same lifetime, but in terms of player agency there is no meaningful distinction. Also true of TNO in Torment - all backstory told through past lives that define a relationship with the final boss. (You also don't get much face time with TTO in Torment, either, come to think of it...)

    Not that I wouldn't have loved me some more Thaos, but I thought it was nice that for once the plot wasn't "bad guy wants to hunt down and kill the player because he's special." In fact in your early run ins with him, he seems to recognize you and maybe show mercy? That was my read, anyway. The real antagonist for most of the game is the player's own awakened soul. So it's more hero vs. self if anything.

    So.... why do we need to kill Thaos?

    Theoretically you don't. You're chasing him to get him to tell you what he knows about your past. The problem is that 1, he refuses to tell you and you can't find out what you need to know without killing him and getting the answers directly from his soul, and 2, by the time you get to him, you've learned too much and now he's decided to kill you.

     

    You can approach him with peaceful intentions if you want. He's just such a jerk that he won't accept that or help you out.

    • Like 1
  7. To Thaos we were just another peon.  To Sarevok we were some mofuggin kin who just wrecked all his plans and needed to be murdered ASAP. To Irenicus we were some mofuggin bhaalspawn who killed his sister and had the last part of the soul he needs.

     

    It would've been nice if the final moments gave a little more thought to the life in progress and didn't dedicate the climax 100% to events that we had very little to do with.  The present life was trivialized by the previous life's story. 

     

    Interesting writing style as far as role playing goes, probably would've benefited from Thaos having a bigger presence / making it more personal.

    The player doesn't choose to be related to sarevok, to kill Irenicus' sister, or to be a bhaalspawn. Those are all equivalent to past life stories since they happen before the game's events. Sure, they happened in the same lifetime, but in terms of player agency there is no meaningful distinction. Also true of TNO in Torment - all backstory told through past lives that define a relationship with the final boss. (You also don't get much face time with TTO in Torment, either, come to think of it...)

     

    Not that I wouldn't have loved me some more Thaos, but I thought it was nice that for once the plot wasn't "bad guy wants to hunt down and kill the player because he's special." In fact in your early run ins with him, he seems to recognize you and maybe show mercy? That was my read, anyway. The real antagonist for most of the game is the player's own awakened soul. So it's more hero vs. self if anything.

    • Like 2
  8. I think dated art style to them isn't really a complaint about the art style at all. It's more like they want everything to be in a modern day 3d engine where they can zoom in and look at their characters' pretty faces. In their dear, misguided heads, a pretty, open world engine like the one for DA:I equates to a current "art style." But guess what, you can't make a game like that for 4 million dollars, and even if you could, you would probably be missing the point of what made IE great.

    • Like 1
  9. They don't do level scaling, so as a general rule, if something is too hard, it's not a bad idea to go do some other quests and return later. The other thing that can help in the early game is hiring extra adventurers from the inn. Full party makes things more manageable.

     

    Engagement is the big thing I've had to get used to. You want to send a tank or two into the fray first to keep the enemy front lines occupied. Then once they've engaged the enemies, you can sneak your damage dealers forward and either take out the support enemies or flank the front line guys to give them and yourself a bonus. I also recommend using pikes or other long range weapons with your damage dealers - you can keep them out of trouble that way and worry less about giving them heavy armor.

  10. I don't mean this in a condescending way, but have you tried lowering the difficulty? In most games, Normal really means Easy and Easy means Stupid Easy. In Pillars, Normal means normal - if you take the time to learn the system and pause regularly during combat - and if you don't, Normal is pretty hard.

     

    I haven't had a party wipe yet on normal, but I had some difficulties until I spent some time reading up on how tho play.

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