SpitefulOne

The wounds mechanic really felt like it should have belonged to the Barbarian in my opinion. The monk has no way to regain endurance unlike the warrior, barbarian and paladin. I hope they make changes before the expansion to how the class functions and provide more class passive talents to increase DR in light armor. I would think some mechanism to minimize knockdown and engage multiple opponents/minimize flanking penalties would really be in line with the martial artist aspect. Overall, I am really disappointed in the mechanical execution of deflection/damage reduction/speed penalties. The original posts that I saw suggested they wanted to normalize the damage to get away from the miss miss crit dead mechanics in the old D&D system but they didn't really accomplish that.

This would probably be easier for some to grasp if there had been Engwithian machines with each God's name stamped on it because that's all they are. They're giant collections of soul energy with prime directives regarding their personalities but they are no more capable of answering any of the big existential questions than Siri. That's the big question posed to the player. If they give meaning to a person's life and order to the world is it okay that they're just big computers in the ether or is a life lived in service to them a lie and meaningless? It's a huge philosophical debate with no 'right' answer. And about the characters manifesting traits of the God's, that's reversed. The gods were manufactured in the image of the Engwithians that created them to be pure incarnations of traits and concepts they valued. So if the player and companions were the spider people then they'd have very little in common with these Gods, it just happens that the Engwithians were basically humans and have that in common with all of their descendants.

The companions being along for the ride is due to the design decision to make them optional and mortal (as in not having plot armor). They could have rewritten the critical path to require certain companions at certain junctures but then you'd get game over screens if they died prior to that point. The companions are more interesting and complex than any of the companions in BG/BG2 or the Dragon Age series (my opinion). I had planned to build my own party on my 2nd play through but I found that I enjoyed having them along for the ride and I like how you can steer their personality through dialogue and it changes how they respond after that point. Each companion's story actually defined the player's character just through how the player responded to the options and molded the companion. Do you tell Eder that his quest is silly and that he should feel bad for killing his God? Do you tell Durance that he went against Magran's will or that Magran failed him? You can point of the futility of Sagani's quest and that she wasted her life trying to tell a story to a deer or tell her that it was worth the journey for even those fleeting moments. So the companions may not be the key to defeating Thaos but that's okay because how you respond to them helps define your character.

Frightened villager in the inn in Twin Elms in the lower left central area. His name is frightened villager so I missed the quest on my first run through as well.