Luzeryn

Happy to read I'm not alone in this. I actually liked the companions in PoE (even the ones some people find boring like Sagani, I liked her a lot for some reason) but in the back of my head I was always thinking how they could have been better doing things a bit differently.

In case you don't know interjections are dialog between your companions, or a line your companion might say in a conversation you're having with another NPC. This is one of the things I find most disappointing about Pillars of Eternity when comparing it to Baldur's Gate 2. Relegating interjections between your companions to short, and mostly irrelevant, conversations while you're moving on the map is not the best way to do it. It's not cheaper, because every line has to be voiced unnecessarily, and it forces the writers to keep the dialog as short as possible. A character like Jan Jansen would be impossible to recreate with a system like this because of those limitations, and it was personally one of my favorites in BG2. It also presents the problem that the only way to do character development is to make the player talk to their companions where there are no restrictions for the text's length, because whatever they say to each other with the current system is usually not that interesting since the writers have to keep it as short as possible. The lines they have in regular conversations are also quite disappointing. The vast majority of them feel out of place, and it doesn't feel like they are actually taking part in the conversation. Several times they will insult the speaker or make some nasty comment about them, but there are almost no reactions to those comments. It feels as if everything they say is just a whisper only the player can hear. Like the writers never made the effort to make it seem like your companions are participating in the conversation and being an active part of the group. There are ways to make this work without having to write different dialog for every NPC depending on which companions are in your group, BG2 did it already. This conversation is a perfect example (ignore the first Jaheira line, that one is supposed to be the player): To the player, it looks like Jaheira is taking control of the conversation, and asking a question to the dryads. Compare this to most interjections in PoE: Edér here might as well be just a voice in your head, since that conversation clearly doesn't feel natural at all, that's not the way those NPCs would have continued talking if Edér had actually said that. Let's go back to the BG2 example. The great thing about it is the dryads aren't actually reacting to you having Jaheira in your party. Jaheira is the one reacting. It is an illusion. Cania will say that line regardless of if you have Jaheira or not in your group and the line feels natural in both cases. The key here is that, if you happen to have her in your party, you'll get a better experience, thanks to that illusion. Combine those illusions with dialog where they actually react to who you have in your party (remember Minsc talking to the kid from Umar Hills, for instance) and you'll have a game that will seem way more reactive that it actually is, which is one of the reasons we love BG2. I'm also not the biggest fan of endless conversations with your companions asking 20 questions to them 5 seconds after they join you (Durance is especially bad at this), because it slows down the pace of the game considerably. But Obsidian apparently loves that since they do it in most of their games, so that's not likely to change. But there are better ways for your companions to talk about themselves without making it seem like the player is interrogating them. Thoughts?

The real question is whether they plan to fix it someday. Looking at how it seems like they basically have only 1 person working on the patches now, seems unlikely.

Among other people, me. And I really think it's good to balance class too. In my own experience, I suffered more from balance issues than from bugs. That does not mean major bugs shouldn't be fixed but I personally think the game is in a pretty good shape now. I'd rather they would fix basic stuff that affects all classes to be honest, like drinking potions where the animation plays but most of the time you don't actually drink it, and if you get hit it just drops the action completely sometimes and have to try again. I just don't see how stuff like that is less important than some small adjustments to one or two particular classes.

I wouldn't translate from Spanish if I were you, the translation is pretty bad sometimes and makes absolutely no sense (I'm 100% sure the translator wasn't even reading what he was writing). I helped fix part of it but I just gave up after a while.

That's the main reason I decided to ignore the betas, since they almost never fix anything people report so why bother. Edit: I also don't understand why they keep rebalancing classes instead of fixing the damn game. Who is asking for those changes?

They should use a generic big sword icon then, like they did with Kalakoth's Minor Blight.

Bumping this hoping someone from the team sees it and it gets changed before the last patch.

Since this is probably going to be the last patch might as well say this now since it bothers me so much. Companion's lines whenever they are selected or given an order should always play, and not only if the game is unpaused. The way they are now is not helping immersion in any way, just "stopping" the action even further by disabling all sound whenever the game is paused. And then when you unpause it, it plays the last one for some reason, when it makes no sense. Also, a lot of times when you select one of your companions they will not make any sound, especially if you click twice on the same portrait. I know this is not major but it should be pretty easy to fix and it would greatly improve the experience of the game in my opinion, since sound is such a huge part of it.

You probably need to choose the Expansion option, since that's the version you have.

Do you steal? I think I found a couple in Defiance Bay.

Tara Platt probably. GM sounds a lot like Mitsuru from Persona 3.

The wizard's weapons Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff and Kalakoth's Minor Blight have their own icons in the inventory screen when you use their spells. But for whatever reason the druid's Firebrand weapon uses the same icon of its spell. Shouldn't it have its own icon too?

Marshal Forwyn is called Forywn on these files: Data/localized/en/text/conversations/15_yenwood/15_cv_chancellor.stringtable:382: <DefaultText>"This is Marshal Forywn, Erl Bademar's military advisor. He will serve as a witness for this proceeding."</DefaultText> Data/localized/en/text/conversations/15_yenwood/15_si_yenwood.stringtable:11: Marshal Forywn approaches. "You've arrived just in time. Lord Gathbin's forces are beginning to move - an attack is imminent."</DefaultText> Data/localized/en/text/conversations/px2_00_stalwart_village/px2_00_si_yenwood.stringtable:11: Marshal Forywn approaches. "You've arrived just in time. Lord Gathbin's forces are beginning to move - an attack is imminent."</DefaultText> Data/localized/en/text/conversations/px2_08_yenwood/px2_08_cv_chancellor.stringtable:417: <DefaultText>"This is Marshal Forywn, Erl Bademar's military advisor. He will serve as a witness for this proceeding."</DefaultText>

This makes reading the ingame books a bit annoying for me.