Strange_Trees

I recall that little kid in Defiance Bay that wanted you to get him a dagger mentioned how Durgan steel (might be mis-remembering that name) was the best but the secret to making it has been lost and whatnot.

The thing I noticed with BG, is for the most part, regardless of race, the PC is culturally human. I can't imagine an elf, dwarf, halfling, or whatever race chosen, when raised by humans, in a fairly isolated human settlement, could be dropped into a city dominated exclusively by other members of their race and fit in at all. I think the rest of this thread is for the most part going in circles. As far as I can tell, OP is just insisting that race should be a major defining trait of a character regardless, and perhaps over, the culture/society that character is from (which I disagree on) and that race should be a defining cultural factor regardless of how or how long multiple races have lived together (also disagree).

I'm still not quite wrapping my head around what these negatives are supposed to be? You say "everyone is mostly really human in effect" but I'm not sure how to interpret that outside of "the non-human races lack stereotypical non-human exaggerations" or "a culture that could conceivably be formed by humans in the same circumstances isn't fantasy enough". Is being too relatable to humans somehow a flaw? What could be done to make the races less "human in effect" without steering them back towards the traditional fantasy tropes in some way?

Varana makes a good point. PoE makes an effort to separate the whole race = culture cliche that's fairly common in fantasy. For the most part, the cultural lines are drawn geographically instead. So elves in Aedyr have more in common with Aedyran humans than with elves in Dyrwood. Even early in the game you see a bit of this, with the group hassling Aloth it's noted that the woman is elven, and she's just as riled up as the two human men she's with. He's Aedyran, she's Dyrwoodan, and that they're both elves doesn't bridge that in the slightest.

Agreed :D PoE had plenty of moments where I was cracking up. Aloth's introduction, Pallegina's sassy comebacks, pretty much anytime Edér piped in during a conversation, and getting snarky with Hiravias were all hilarious moments for me. Plus some of the otherwise pointless little flavor text when examining some things in the scenery. True, there wasn't anything outright slapstick, but I'm okay with that. You don't need things exploding into confetti or people randomly breaking out into song to have humor.

Looks like it's heading into the last 24 hours needing about $4k to hit the Chanters stretch goal. Seems pretty doable to me :D Edit: Haha looks like it hit within the hour of me posting that lol

Now I'm convinced that the black cat pet is actually Schrödinger's Cat >.>

:/ Aww. Did you throw around a lot of AoE during the fight? I think pets are only immortal once they're in your bag and equipped, at which point they're basically just vanity items.

Interesting! Something about how Sagani spoke always seemed notable to me, but I could never put my finger on why. Although I'm not American (Polish-Canadian) and I can't really differentiate American accents very well. Although I've noticed pretty much all of the companions have noticeable accents to me; Aloth, Edér, Pallegina, Kana, and Hiravias all have noticeable accents. Grieving Mother always sounds strange and detached, and Durance sounds like a chain-smoker to me

I actually have a screenshot of that Hiravias convo >.>

I think if you have a high enough perception or intelligence, the "I don't think you want to do that" line leads to some options that will talk them down.

I think generally, these kinds of games reserved portraits for characters that can join your party, and sometimes key NPCs. Heck, I don't think even Sarevok had a portrait in BG1 o.O I disagree on portraits being more important though. I think you can quickly learn a lot about a character in how they talk, far more than you could with just a tiny portrait. The tone in which a character says a few words can reveal lots about what they think on a subject, their own emotional state, and bits of their personality. Also, tones like sarcasm, despair, condescending, ect, can have a lot more of a punch when voiced. Raedric for example; between the flavor text blurb on his appearance, the way he was sitting on the throne in-game, and the way he talked, I had a pretty clear mental picture of the guy. Would a little portrait have added to it? A bit, sure, but it's hardly crucial to understanding the character. All it really serves is to steer a players mental picture of the character in a specific direction, which really doesn't seem all that important either. It's much the same with NPCs like Maerwald and Lady Webb. I think a lot of the impact of these characters would have been lost entirely if the voice over was traded in for a picture.

Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen labels on dialog options outside of the ones requiring some sort of skill/stat/reputation check. I should poke through the menu options again Killed them and saved the girl, told her to go make a life for herself in a city. I think most of the companion endings are based on what you say to them throughout the game, or at least in the crucial conversations (the ones flagged with the little talk icon on the portrait).

Yeeeeah I thought that one could have been done a little better. I wonder, if you just steal the paper and never confront the guy about the breastplate, does he still show up after you talk to the ciphers?

I think what really stands out to me with how Edér is written is that he's really not that extraordinary. RPG companions generally tend to come from some notable background, or at least training; secret royalty, master assassins, mentored by the previous generations heroes, seasoned mercenaries ect ect. Edér is just a farmer who soldiered for a bit in one war and then just went back to being a farmer. He really has no reason to stand out, and in some weird way that's what makes him stand out. That and I'm convinced he's pretty much the nicest person in Eora That bit with the looters towards the end of his quest, where the flavor text said he looked like he was about to get angry, but then he just stopped himself and tossed a sarcastic comment, that spoke volumes about his character, imo. I know the ending slide i got isn't technically all that bad, but I want the one where he joins the Night Market (that name kind of makes me lol)

I'm really curious what determines Edér's ending slide, since I initially got #1, which seemed a happy enough ending, but somehow I like #3 more.

I had this happen, but it turns out the map is very tall, and level 1 shows up at the very top while the map tends to load in the middle. Have you tried dragging the map towards the top?

So it seems my party has suddenly become very attached to the skeleton cannon fodder Chanters can summon. Pretty much anytime one gets smushed (which is often) someone gets upset and lets me know via the generic "someone has fallen" callouts. Not a particularly huge issue, but definitely not something that was happening before.

I agree on most suggestions except: In which I go: "NoooooOooo nonononono NO." I hate it when character morality is reduced to a check-box tracked on a character sheet. If you spend time talking to an npc and nothing about them convinces you they're a bad person, having a spell that makes them glow and say 'yes they're bad who knows why it doesn't matter' is the exact opposite of immersion. In-game, the traits your character picks up (benevolent/deceptive/honest/stoic/ect) are a nice substitute for alignment. Besides, the games entire story runs on grey-morality. Having defined good/evil stats attached to NPCs would ruin that entirely

I have to agree with Nakia. I generally find that darker settings lend themselves more to stories and themes which explore the human condition with more depth than a lighter setting would. I think PoE did this exceptionally well. There wasn't some dark external force looming around to make people nervous. No zombie apocalypse, darkspawn, reapers, mysteriously united army of orcs at the border, et cetera. Instead you had something unseen that has been slowly rotting a country from the inside for the last fifteen years. People are trying to fight it but they have no idea where to start, so you have an entire population losing hope, turning desperate, and mad with grief. Having all that be a footnote in a setting where little farming villages are still perfectly happy and business as usual would be pretty jarring. Also, darker worlds tend to allow for more meaningful morality choices in game, instead of the saint/jerk dichotomy that tries to be a moral system. I was actually a bit miffed when I played Dragon Age Origins, since it was billed as 'dark fantasy' (forget where, might have been the back of the box), but it turned into a fairly standard "dark evil army that only you can defeat with some corrupt noble **** making it harder for you" adventure where if you did everything right, you could still pretty much save everyone. I'm glad PoE managed to avoid that.

I think he comments on most pets at some point I once heard a "C'mere kitty! I wanna pet you!" at the orange tabby I also recall someone mentioning something about Sagani telling her fox to "leave the pig alone" so I imagine she might have comments as well.

I've been playing with a ranger as my main char, and can't really complain. I wouldn't mind more stuff to play with though, the class seems pretty hands-off most of the time, except maybe when positioning around groups to try to harass enemy casters. Can't say my wolf tears things apart much. Usually it off-tanks just long enough to thin out larger groups a bit

It's just a sized down version of the adra pillars from the logo. Woedica's crown looks like it's made of long, thin sharp spikes, with some broken off. I have spent a while trying to figure out if the face on the game background (you see it when you start a new game and the image pans upwards) might be Woedica though, but I'm still not sure

Wine. Lots of wine. Any wine, really. Or Jagermiester on ice if I feel like it.

Hmm, looks like that one isn't on the Steam release of the soundtrack?