Daidre

~5% of the population is full?

It would not look half as ridiculous. How many other Chinese or Indian NPC with proper Chinese/Indian names and looks does this game has? My most optimistic bet is ~3-5 for either. But this couple is so "special and international" in every way imaginable that it is textbook ham. It breaks suspension of disbelief.

Indian girl asks for a help with her asexual lesbian crash for Chinese older lady. It is epitome of ham fisted. Like 4 minorities in one couple.

Blowing up her swetheart's head at their romantic evening and seeing her "You just destroyed only thing I was living for!" is probably funniest and most gratifying moment in the game. It is so cool, I am afraid that Obsidian will patch it out after seeing videos.

It is actually a good advice. I would definitely be more entertained than proceeding with TOW.

My only hope is that he had not completely burned out on PoE 1&2 and will return to making CRPGs after his PnP dream project. Dialogues I can click through.

So maybe this is why game does not work for me. I had expected some layer of drama under comedy and something more than lighthearted pew-pew boom-boom corporation is bad theme park, something with nuance, insight and in-depth characterization, like an older Obsidian games. You just proved my doubts that there is nothing more to find in TWO if your sense of humor is not on par to truly appreciate the writing.

I played Fallouts back in high school. I prefer Arcanum in the terms of setting, but fairly enjoyed both of them nonetheless. There is something really really wrong in the claim that TOW somewhere near on the shelf. Fallouts are many things, but they were never boring in attempts to be smart, funny or cute. And I don't remember them. Abusing dots. After every couple. Of words.

I comparing it to recent Disco Elysium. Game that is not afraid to make jokes about politics, racism and police cruelty. Hmm, if you think about it a bit, TOW's "Corporate Dystopia" looks exactly like 100% Communism with it's slogans, posters, monopolies and brain-washed people. I do not know whether it is coincidence, ignorance or brilliance at work here. DE also has a lot of "whacky" NPC, but never goes into joke-barrage TOW does in every dialogue. They sound like a real people, not like posts/comments in social media written with only purpose to gather "likes".

My point is that Fallout 4/76 being bad games does not automatically make TOW better. Obsidian was always known for a flawed but interesting games. TOW is direct opposite: 1) Very safe and unimaginative writing. Every NPC is talking-head joke dispenser at steady rate of 5 smartass comment/minute. 2) Tons of fetch quests, more and more as the game progress. 3) All conflicts boil down to corporation vs just one another rebellious group. It is Skyrim level of faction nuance. 4) Enemy variety is bad, generic marauders everywhere and outnumber peaceful population 3 to 1. 5) Perks are boring, skill system is bare-bones and gun/melee skills detract from game play more than add to it. People completed the game with 20 in gun skill by shooting everyone in the face. I oneshotted whole starting location on Hard after finding plasma rifle with level 2 char. But it is polished, pretty, bug-free, easy to get into and just plain easy. Generic user-friendly RPG/FPS with Whedon-style writing and Borderlands/Bioshock looks for a people who hate gaas, mtx and Fallout 76.

Much closer comparison would be Cyberpunk 2077 and I do not think there is any possible universe where it would work in TOW's favor. And no, I am not a CD Project fan and yet to play Witcher 2&3.

Well, Deadfire is game where it became painfully obvious that Obsidian team's combined writing talent went downhill, but good system was still keeping it afloat. TOW writing is like somebody cloned Xoti and contaminated whole game with her. At least the part I have seen.

Why you insist on dragging Bioware and Bethesda games into comparison? My main point that TWO is boring and sporting some Tumblr-style writing comparing to Obsidian's own games - it is lacking next to PoE, Tyranny and NWN 2 original campaign. And completely embarrassing after Mask of Betrayer, KOTOR 2 and Alpha Protocol. Worst thing about this game is how alike it is to Bioware and Bethesda games now.

I played TOW for a couple of hours and just could not force myself to proceed. I never touched Fallout 3-4, but TOW has the worst writing I have seen in Obsidian game ever. Not technically bad, but utterly mediocre and hopelessly tryhard in its attempts to be snarky and funny in every sentence (and always fails). It is so meh so soon after brilliant Disco Elysium. I never thought I'd see the day when Spiders (Greedfall) would make more enjoyable game than Obsidian.

I was really enjoying combat system when I started my new run of Deadfire. I customized my party with all classes I wanted to try and getting through first 12 levels and early fights was extremely satisfying. I completed bounty hunts, most of the small islands and cleaned unique ships from the sea. All this in first 10 hours. But i did not have even remotely challenging fight for 20 hours after, while doing quests in Neketaka and faction lines, all fights devolved to "switch AI on and left click". Any dungeon of note is hidden behind the wall of dozen or so NPC spewing their "brilliant writing" at me. And when I actually got to Poko Kohara (one of the biggest dungeons in original game) it was whole 20 minute of adventuring with 14th level party. And then back to yapping NPC. It is such borefest that I tempted to drop game before seeing new Megabosses and, as I heard, nice dungeon in last DLC. There is decent system in Deadfire and brilliant itemization, but severe absence of challenging combat (or any combat at all) for long stretches of time and general density of like 1 tiny dungeon for 5 hours of play is where game falls flat on its face. PS I am playing om PoTD, but selecting all challenges and then doing non-combat quest first to level up or some stupid things like no-pause, breaking items and body-guarding low-HP NPC are even farther from my idea of fun.

What surprised me the most about Deadfire, that it has fps drops even when paused. In older games like IE series or NWN, when PC had a poor performance in heavy combat scenes you can at least pause game and give commands normally, but in POE when I pause ship boarding I still need to click through menus with 15 fps. It is mind-boggling.

I read you post couple of days ago on reddit and now I have a chance to say thank you :) I blamed my low performance in ship battles at first until noticed how consistent it is and googled( Stumbling upon issues like these after anniversary patch (where Obsidian promotes Iron Man achiev to the boot) makes me harsher about the game that it probably deserves. At least they fixed MC being invariably in front of party and promptly shot to death in ship battles.

I haven't touched Deadfire for months and one of the first things that welcomed me on my new run was the bug that stops characters from drinking any potions in combat with AI on. Is it a new shiny feature from 5.0 or this one was introduced earlier? Also, after playing couple of days on my mom's PC (i5 3570k, gtx 770, 16gb RAM) I was surprised how utterly horrible this game runs - fps in combat regularly drops in sub 10 territory, when Pathfinder: Kingmaker runs pretty fine with stable 30-40 fps even in heaviest locations. I was playing Deadfire on release on literally same PC and it was never this bad. And I definitely hadn't minute+ long loading screens that lead to eventual crashes from time to time. I cant believe that year ago at release I had high hopes that Obsidian is capable of making this technical failure of the game better. But hurrah! they wasted their time to add TB mode.

I always linked preference for gender-neutral pronouns in games with process of making voice overs. Recording two versions of every dialog could be costly for a such a small benefit. In older games, I do not know about pillars though, there were two separate gender specific dlg files and supporting both of them took precious development time too. Drugging politics into it is weird...

There is actual clue - when you talk to Mokeha and accept her refusal to return money for free you can talk with her mom about it and she'll give a hint to make an exchange. And than, you can ask Valian girl about item and she'll give it without any payment.

I, as a woman, honestly see nothing wrong with a picture of cute anime girl with naked butt used to illustrate the joke. But I always give a kinda "wierdo" look to person who claims, with a straight face, that it is a bad thing to do because some sane rational adult can find this picture(!) offensive. Can't talk for everyone, of course, it may be a cultural thing. That is a good thing about being a girl yourself - you can call Xoti obsessive bitch and everyone will question your taste in characters instead of berating you for being horrible person who demeans a poor young lady.

IMHO PEN food is the best option available when you do not need affliction immunity. Hot Razor Skewers for +2 PEN, +2 Might and +1 PL is a rough equivalent of whole class feature, and Magic version is pretty good too with +10% damage and 20% AOE Radius. They are also can be bought in Neketaka from food vendors in RDC Tavern and on the street and regularly replenished, so there is no need to look for crafting components to have it always active.

In Deadfire I still remember half of my money regularly disappearing on the game load as hundreds of days of sailors wages months after release. Have they ever fixed this? And this is in the same playthrough where end boss never appeared. Not to mention regular crashes, memory leak and constant statters on high tier nvidia GPU that obsidian have a pinned post about and never tried to fix. Even comparing 2 games from purely technical standpoint, first POE was ridden with small bugs too but never had such a horrible issues for a long time.

There was so much potential in this part. We could make some tricky plans depending whether Onekaza likes Watcher enough or not to let near, or use Maya for this and have her agree/disagree depending on her character quest result. Or even something cool like Maya shooting queen only to meet disappointed Kana back in HQ. Instead we can murder anyone involved and only quest giver will notice. For me this detracts from game a lot - Deadfire avoids to involve party members in main plot/quests/dialogues to any noticeable effect with excuse that you can kick out everyone and go solo or with merc team. It also avoids like plague any meaningful C&C that results in more then one line of dialogue or end slide. It was same in POE too but less glaring since companions were not attached to factions.

It really surprised me in finale. All factions were more or less equal in good/bad things in their politics and then Ruatai suddenly tells me: go drown one city block in blood while we bomb civilians in another. And I was "What?! Are you crazy, no sane person will agree to do this." It was like writer decided to tell me: No matter they are right about incompetent Huana leadership that hurts its own citizens more then helps. No matter they have a point about how stupid it is to mine Luminous Adra. They are bad! Militaristic countries are bad! Invasions are bad! Look how bad they truly are! With same level of subtlety. what would you expect militaristic thugs decide to annex deadfire with nice word cute bird and power of friendship? if not war then coup it's only reasonable Putting bullet in her head since she likes her terrace so much would be reasonable. Bombing docks full of civilians including some friendly/neutral to Ruatai elements is "Muahaha evil" level of bad writing where only author's intent is to show how bad militaristic countries are. Also, Onekaza had no problems with allowing Watcher close enough to murder her. Player is in position where he do not even need distraction for this.