algroth

No worries, we've waited longer.

Sidekicks are officially in.

I posted my concerns earlier, but it's an idea with a lot of promise for certain. I wrote down a question or two about it for the Q&A, will wait for that before I get too excited about it.

How are you guys approaching the random encounters and uncharted islands? Will each of these be generic encounters and locations in the style of Storm of Zehyr's worldmap spawns, or are you planning on making each encounter and location unique and (in the former's case) one-time-only?

Better to be punted than to be tossed?

What's exile? What's concealed? What on Earth are you talking about? Did you play a different PoE by accident? A month before the release, players find out that the Italian translation has been deleted. And companions removed. And other things are not in the game. But hey, then there was a message from Exile. As if you could not tell before the game is released. In the Torment campaign, the question arose about what a combat system should have the game. It was clear from the outset that it will be rounded. But if it had been communicated before, there would have been less money. If I recall correctly, the people at inXile actually made a backer poll asking whether they preferred RTP or turn-based, and the latter won out. If so it's what the backers voted for. This aside, though, is a smaller party size really as big a component of the game as the style of gameplay? Is it even all that relevant to as to make it blatantly clear in the campaign's presentation? I reckon the latter consideration played in the devs' mind a lot more as to what to show and talk about in their campaign than whether people would not pledge if, Heavens forbid, we had a maximum party size of *five* instead of six.

Yo dawg, I heard Eothas likes grabbing ships so we put a figurehead of Eothas grabbing a ship on your ship so that he can grab himself grabbing your ship while he grabs your ship? Here's a question, will Xzibit be the one in charge of pimping our vessel?

Pfft, wait till they announce the stretch goals for $7mil three *hours* before the end.

Y'know... There's a Q&A with Josh later today...

As long as the main bulk of the game is still a focused, well written story then, whilst I'm not a big fan of random encounters, I don't mind. It's not an either/or for me. Certainly the story should be well-written, focused and so on, but exploration is nevertheless an important part of the game, not least given its New World theme, and I think it does require all aspects of exploration to remain unique and not merely as a generic game mechanic. I mean, I trust Obsidian are likely taking this into consideration already, but all the same I thought I should mention it.

When you say side kicking a dwarf, do you imply footsweeping?

You mean stomp.

This update makes me very hyped, but also somewhat wary. I wouldn't want this to become Storm of Zehyr 2, filled with random encounters which all look alike and do nothing but pad out the game and standardize the setting. I hope each encounter will be unique and different, each area uniquely designed and interesting in its own right. I don't want to grow to dread facing the 50th nameless pirate party while looking for the 27th hidden island that may or may not have some unique treasure and quest in it. If the price to pay for deeper exploration is to be subjected to several generic areas/maps the ways of Baldur's Gate II random encounters, I'd rather they just stick with a more rigid map and keep each of the areas unique and interesting.

And be romanceable in either sex?

That'll most likely depend on where you start out in the game. Will Eothas' awakening be playable, or will it be a cutscene/scripted interaction? From my understanding you'll meet Aloth and Pallegina in Deadfire as they'll be there already on different business, so by that I assume you'll get to meet them later, not right away.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/22/cult-japanese-director-seijun-suzuki-dies-aged-93 Seijun Suzuki died. It makes me sad to an extent, though 93's not a shabby age to go. For those not familiar with his wonderful filmography, go check out Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill and Gate of Flesh!

That reminds me, yesterday Kurt Cobain would have been 50. Pretty crazy to see time fly.

Hey! I'll be writing down some questions as I think of them. The first one that comes to mind right now is... On the boards there've been many doubts and speculations about sidekicks and how they differ from regular companions. Any chance we may hear more on this distinction? How fleshed out will they be (compared to, say, the characters in PoE 1)? Will they interject in our conversations or comment in our travels? Will they engage in banter with the rest of our companions? Will we be able to talk to them?

First the cake, then the gods and now Fulvano... FeelsBadMan

Now Larry Coryell... http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/02/20/516245069/guitarist-larry-coryell-godfather-of-fusion-dies-at-73?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social

Reviews for Logan are coming in, and so far they're very positive, landing a 95% Tomatometer with 60 reviews and counting. Looking forward to it!

Plenty I love here! I reckon my only two disagreements would be with the multiplayer option (I'd rather there be Co-op or no multiplayer at all), and with the Miniature Giant Space Piglet quest, since I'd rather really leave that pet to being a humorous nod to Boo and nothing more. I'd rather avoid attracting attention to the elements in the game that act as fan service, especially given that we'll already be having a Black Isle and some Bastards to go along with it. That aside, some ace ideas here! One aspect not touched upon is that I'd really like there to be some more variety to the choices as to how to build your stronghold. I reckon there will be, however, given that Josh has mentioned that as a disappointing aspect of the first game a few times.

That is absolutely fair. I think we still don't know WHY certain endings happen and what the factors weigh in. It would be nice to at least retroactively look back at choices and go "aha, so that is why I got a bad companion ending". I think this is important, too. Spoiler from PoE ahead: Edit: Ah, I see it was addressed. My bad, and I agree with Amentep.

Takeihu?

Also I'm not sure where the idea that the party is being reduced to avoid confusion/simplify combat comes from. From my understanding the reason to a reduced party size has to do with balancing instead, and if so, I can understand how, if we think of the many different builds and comps one can run with each individual character, five groups of these are easier to work on than six. If anything the argument can be made that the idea here is to make combat more consistently challenging, and therefore more strategic/less simple overall, than actually going the opposite way.