xzar_monty

Sounds like a bug, surely?

Seriously, the narrator is a nuisance, and we need the option to turn it off. The narration is (obviously) so much slower than a realistic reading pace, and if you try to read while it's talking, it's nothing but a disturbance. It is also immersion-breaking in the sense that it works against your imagination; in that sense it's like spoon-feeding, to an extent. Stuff that I read on my own is much more evocative of mood and detail than someone else's vocal interpretation of the same material, particularly in a CRPG setting. I understand that someone has spent a heck of a long time reading all that stuff, but it's not only unnecessary, it's frankly bothersome to have to listen to it.

The second sentence in that review deserves a massive facepalm. Difficult to read further, actually! First rule of journalism: only be ambiguous when you absolutely need to, and never write sentences whose ambiguity makes them look senseless.

* NOTE: I am something of a difficulty fetishist (though not on the first couple of playthroughs). But even I realize that it's a side challenge that the vaaaaaaast majority of the user base not only won't care about, but would be upset to find out that things were cut just so folks like us could scratch an itch. By the way, it would be extremely interesting to know what percentage of players do more than one playthrough (you mentioned "first couple", and this caught my eye). In my view, PoE 1 had a replay value of exactly zero: there was nothing random in the game, and the world was totally static except for the choices you made as a player. I really liked playing the game, but having got to the end, I can't see why I would ever want to start another game. (No criticism implied here.)

I did my playthrough approximately a year after PoE 1 had come out. I thought it was really good. Giving this one a go in, August, maybe?

A lot of users on niche forums, which is what this is, live in a bubble and refuse to ever consider the big picture. My post is not to say full VO or death, or even that Deadfire can compete with those games (though I promise you I will like it more than Original Sin 2). I am just pointing out that full VO is basically a staple of most video games these days, even RPG's. Suggesting it is a mistake is living in denial of modern gaming standards, and more to the point, no one has any proof to indicate the money could have been spent better elsewhere. 1) There is also the question of whether most video games these days, even RPG's, are worth anyone's time. I did try two recent ones and lasted much less than an hour on both of them (which allowed me to cancel my purchase, luckily enough). So, there's that, too. It is entirely possible that essentially the whole industry is producing rubbish. And obviously I'm not saying that it's full voice acting that is ruining these games, but it would appear to be a contributing factor. 2) Strictly speaking, outside of mathematics, no one has any proof of anything at all. But even if we're being merely realistic, your argument about money spent is so speculative that no proper comment can really be made, as it doesn't really make sense. What could possibly constitute such proof?

Ditto. Quite some time ago, when Neverwinter Nights came out as the successor-of-sorts of Baldur's Gate II, I remember thinking: what will the 3D engine do to the party interactions that were such an integral part of the massive attraction of BG2? What will remain of that particular magic? Well, the answer was, nothing at all remained. And so (for that and many other reasons) the successor was infinitely inferior to its predecessor. I found Pillars of Eternity to be quite fascinating, although, to me, it has no replay value whatsoever, so having played through it once I won't be returning. I'm still very interested in PoE2, although this particular piece of news, the voicing bit, does cause some concern.

My main question would probably be: what of significance does the game gain from full voice acting that it doesn't already have with partial voice acting?

Naturally, I do not know how things are. But let's be frank here: how many of us genuinely believe that having all dialogue voiced does NOT reduce the amount of dialogue options? It's superb if it does not, but it does not seem realistic at all to me to suppose that this is the case. The OP pointed out that random NPCs on the street will repeat their voiced lines over and over again. This, again, seems like a very poor choice. We have a precedent from Neverwinter Nights, for instance, where some inane dialogues continued to be repeated. In Port Llast, there was this bit of conversation in an inn between "young Alhelor [sp?]" and the guy who turned out to be the werewolf in the end. When you heard it for the fifth time, it really started to break your immersion in the game. Obviously, the game world is utterly and completely fake. But when it continues to announce its fakiness this way, it becomes quite difficult to suspend one's disbelief.

I'm not entirely sure whether that's a productive approach towards someone who is indecisive. Furthermore, rest assured that under no circumstances would I ever even consider basing my decisions on what you think or suggest. In my experience, voicing has always worked best when only a selected amount of dialogue is actually voiced. In Icewind Dale II, for instance, some characters had all their dialogue voiced, and it got quite grating quite quickly: as reading is so much quicker and more convenient than listening to someone speak, the continuous voicing simply became a nuisance. I wonder if there'll be a demo that'd allow people to check this out before purchase.

Oh, dang. Full voicing is such a bad idea, especially if the only options you're given are either to use it all or not to have any voicing. This is actually a feature that seriously makes me question whether to buy the game at all. And I was already so much looking forward to it.

I did have them enabled, but disabling them did nothing. Thanks for the try, anyway. Any other ideas, anyone? The lag is really considerable when you move items on the inventory screen. But it never appears anywhere else. As for Steam in general, I would rather have nothing to do with it, frankly. The "achievements" I occasionally get, for instance, are simply a nuisance. Couldn't care less.

Hello all, I recently re-installed my copy of Pillars of Eternity and purchased both White March add-ons. I decided to give the game one more try (last time I lost interest the minute I reached maximum level). So, everything is working fine except for one thing: when I pick up an item on my inventory screen and move it from one slot to another, there's a rather terrible lag in graphics. I did not have this before; everything worked just fine. As of yet, I have not seen this lag anywhere else in the game, but on the inventory screen, it's there whenever I'm moving an item, i.e. whenever the cursor changes. Does anyone have an idea of what's going on and what, perhaps, to do about it?

Ok. My rogue is at level 4, so that might explain some of it. I suppose I'll try the traps later on. I have also found them just piling up in my stash, uselessly...

Indeed. Even the damage they do amounts to about one reasonable attack, which is not much. But hey, thanks for the info. And yes, the traps weren't there... The game also seems to have very poor intelligence in some senses. I opened that door, ran away and had one of the mercenaries run after me. I dealt with him. Fine. But, I couldn't save the game, even though there was no active encounter going on. I could only save the game after going back to that room, luring the mercenaries out one by one and dealing with each one. I thought that was pretty badly done, in terms of game mechanics.

Oh, you're limited to placing just one trap at a time. I never knew that. I don't think I'll ever even try again; that just made the whole thing seem like a complete waste of time. Oh dear. But thanks for the info!

So, my rogue character had amassed a nice selection of traps into her inventory. I had never used any of them myself. But then I came across an encounter perfectly suited for that: in the catacombs, a room at the end of a corridor is full of mercenaries, and the door to that room is closed. I didn't deal with the baddies on my first attempt, so I decided to set the corridor full of traps, leave the rest of my guys behind, open the door with my fast monk and the run back to the rest of my group with the mercenaries behind me, setting off the traps. It was a good enough plan, I thought. There was only drawback: the traps didn't go off. I tried multiple saves, but no. The mercenaries just ran through them as if they weren't there. So, how does this part of the game work, if it does?

<delete this post, please. I cannot do it myself. It's a mistake.>

Ok, thanks again. Well, I have to say that this aspect of the game is a bit of a disappointment. I'm always interested in "personalities" and "surprises" in games like this. Well, I now have four NPCs in my party, and none of them seems to have anything even resembling a personality, they're just automatons that help me better deal with monsters and other encounters. Nothing I decide to do or not do matters to any of them in the slightest - as far as personality is concerned, it's as if they're not there at all. So, if everything is going to be exactly the same on replay (including encounters, the minutiae of the story line and everything related to the NPCs in my group), it doesn't look promising. But hey: there's also an awful lot of great stuff in the game. I have enjoyed it so far.

"Hit rolls are random" comes under the heading of "We're really, really reaching now", though. But thanks for the info so far. It seems there's not much in the game, in this respect. It does affect replay value quite a bit, especially because the story line seems so linear that you're likely to meet the same NPCs in the same locations in the same order no matter what.

So, I've played the game for a bit now, and I do like it a lot. But I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that absolutely everything in the game is scripted and pre-planned right down to the minutest detail. Like, which monsters you encounter, which character is where and when and what can possibly happen in a given situation. Now, I understand that the difficulty rating can affect the (amount of?) monsters you get in an encounter, which is fine as far as it goes, but that's not much. I do realise that a game of this size has to contain and awful lot of railroading and pre-written stuff, because otherwise everything simply becomes unmanageable. But still. Is there: 1) No random encounters? (Like, the last time you walked upon that road, it was empty. The next day, when you walk back, somebody or something may be on it.) 2) No random loot to be found anywhere, in anyone's possession? 3) Nothing that happens by chance? To specity #3 a bit: In Baldur's Gate 2, for instance, there was a number of things that could happen once you fulfilled the specifications, but when and where that stuff happened was not guaranteed. Like, you might wake up surrounded by a group of thieves and murderers, IF you had one specific NPC with you AND you were romancing her AND that romance had passed a certain point AND you had decided to sleep outdoors. This was excellent stuff. Is there any of it in this game?

Ok, thanks for that. If it really works as you said, it's a bit of a letdown, unless there are significant differences in the way the loot can be determined while loading a zone. For me, one of the most disappointing aspects in games like this is the way so much stuff is pre-determined. An element of chance is always nice. I know the hazards it can pose, but I don't think it's too difficult to avoid the pitfalls.

A very simple question for people "in the know": is the loot dropped by enemies in the game completely pre-determined (i.e. pre-set inventories for adversaries), or does it contain an element of randomness? It would be great to know this. Personally, I would love it if there was even a tiny random element in there.