algroth

If anyone's interested, here's another isometric RPG inspired by the IE games currently looking for funding on Kickstarter (Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grapeocean/black-geyser-couriers-of-darkness?ref=1rbt7h

Grindrgand But can we romance him? I bet his cult practices death by snu-snu.

Not sure if it's been shared already, but here's a screenshot of Pallegina in the most recent Deadfire stream. It looks much better, in my opinion.

Here is the problem, that's not an accurate statement. First, there is a quest to get each sidekick, but we have no clue how comprehensive those quests are. I somehow think it is going to be a little more complicated than wandering into them, saying hi, and asking if they want to come along. Which is hilariously how you pick up almost all of Eternity's companions. I doubt it will be quite this good, but I would like to think it will be something along the lines of the old Mass Effect 2 character DLC's. Where there was an actual robust quest focused on that character, with areas/levels that existed purely for that quest. So dismissing those quests as not being part of the cost without knowing their content is unwise, those quests may have cost 10+ thousands of dollars of dev money on their own per quest. Second, please people, stop saying just a portrait. Every party member in this game has no less than 4 portraits, and they are not easy to make. Just draft one probably took a large portion of an artists work week, getting to "proposed final" probably took multiple drafts, and we all know Ywdin for example has gone through at least 3 drafts of her final portrait. Additionally, do you guys really think they get those watercolor variants by just slapping a photoshop filter on there? It is a little more complicated than that. Give the portrait designers some respect. Then of course there is that dreaded wasted money on whatever VO there is, and the writing of said VO. Lastly, they also all have unique looks, which means unique character models, not just portraits. I absolutely promise every unique character model in the game cost 10+ thousands again per model. Only Rekke will look like Rekke, no one else in the game gets that character model. In the end did the sidekicks actually cost a quarter mill? Probably not. But I bet you they ended up taking at least 100k, maybe 200, and frankly, you need to pad stretch goals slightly. Why? Because you need extra funding for all those unexciting things people don't want to pay for. Like temporary interns, or an extra week of QA, or spare funds to justify delaying release a full month so you can quash more bugs. Yup, and again, the fact that a stretch goal was set at $250k over the previous one doesn't mean all that's the money that will go into that specific feature - the stretch goal is merely an incentive to continue pledging to the game. The money collected goes to making the *game*, not implementing a specific feature. The studio then decides how to best use their funds.

This, and his +10 friendly AoE accuracy bonus on Holy Radiance was a beast which more than made up for his Per weakness. He was a pretty integral part of my party at all times.

I have it on good authority that Xoti is actually Saerileth. Good to know, the first game was a little light on creepy ephebophiliac romances written in cringey ye olde English.

A true knight.

I can absolutely confirm Eternity is not loved for it's combat. The biggest thing most reviewers liked was the story build up and how it was different than anything really ever done in a game, how it had a lot of connections to modern society, and how well built the world was. Most people said the combat was "serviceable but nothing you haven't seen before, and it could become a bit of a slog". That's the general consensus in my experience too (several going as far as saying the combat was outright poor), but I'll also add my vote in favour of its combat, I thought it was very enjoyable myself.

Does this mean we can get Saerileth in Deadfire?

From the Q&A with Josh and Bobby Null: Having recently played through Baldur's Gate II again with Mazzy in my party I'm actually rather surprised to draw the distinction with her and she does have some pretty specific content dedicated to her, in the form of a personal quest and also encounters, banter and interjections that makes her a more involved character than, say, Valygar or even the likes of Keldorn. More specifically, Mazzy has a sidequest involving a poisoned sister in Trademeet, and an encounter where an ogre challenges her to a duel at the Copper Coronet arena. Likewise I recall a fair bit of banter with Korgan for example (him trying to woo her on several occasions), a rather humorous running joke with Valygar where she appoints Valygar her squire, and voicing her distaste of Viconia to her personally, and so on. Banter is most definitely existent with her character, though it is arguable that the banter may only really be relevant if you happen to land on the party that prompts it. Which makes me wonder if this is what Josh meant with "little to no banter" - is it a matter that they absolutely won't talk to other companions, or will they speak a bit to some but not to all? I would find it odd for example if Ydwin and Aloth didn't have a few words to exchange considering Aloth's distaste for Ydwin's profession; but maybe on the other hand Ydwin and Tekehu have little to discuss with one another. I'm rather confused by Josh's explanation about banter being hard work and am not sure I get the complication based on how he explained it. He mentioned something about the banter being a multiplicative work... Did he mean across characters or number of characters a sidekick would interact with? Maybe they'd assumed that a series of banters between a specific companion and sidekick would open for an expectation of banter across all sidekicks and characters, and hence if a single bit of banter amounted to four or five lines of dialogue, and you'd expect about three or so per companion/sidekick, then you'd have to implement 150 lines of dialogue per sidekick to accomodate all ten character's they'd interact with - if so I can definitely understand... But I don't think they *need* to interact with everyone, maybe only a few banters that make sense for the more critical matches/mismatches (e.g. Aloth and Ydwin as stated above). Voicing the lines would obviously add to the cost but it seems the choice to omit them was made before the decision of voicing all dialogue, from my understanding of how and when each decision was made in Deadfire's production. On the subject of budget, I think there's a misconception at play here that the stretch goal's value directly represents the cost for that particular stretch goal, but that isn't quite true. Josh and Adam have spoken to a pretty large extent about how in hindsight many of the stretch goals for the first Pillars were bad ideas because they ultimately had to put way too many resources into those elements that could have best been spent elsewhere - which suggests the likes of splitting the big city into two, and the Endless Paths, and Caed Nua and so on clearly ended up being pretty costly, likely well over what would have been "allotted" by their stretch goals. There was some negativity about the stretch goals for Deadfire because they didn't relatively seem as ambitious but this is more because they knew thanks to prior experience what was feasible to promise which wouldn't end up being implemented half-way or leech off the resources from other elements in the game. I think stretch goals usually offer new features with which to incentivate further investment for a game, but ultimately I don't reckon they ever mean "this is the money that will be given to this particular feature" - as an investor or backer you are pledging on the game, not the particular feature, and the cost of the same ultimately falls to how the devs allot the overall funds (those features may ultimately cost more or less). So the bottom line for me is that whether the stretch goal is "worth" that money is a bit moot as a discussion, I think, and I also reckon it's a bit disingenuous to assume that the Endless Paths or the likes is a marker to what Obsidian could do with the money being discussed. For the record I do agree it's pretty disappointing news and it may as well ensure I don't ever use the sidekicks.

Hey, looking heroic can look good too! I get what you mean though, and for the most part I agree - yet as a young teen I also admit to have been guilty of playing a few skimpy female characters because... Well... It's a time in one's life where we let our hormones make the call way too often. :D I get the appeal behind designing a character based on sex appeal, though nowadays I tend to create characters based on a character concept or role I'd like to explore. In the defense of "skimpy" characters, I also don't think these two areas are mutually exclusive, and you can definitely be trying to roleplay a Safana-type character who uses her looks and charm to her knowing advantage for example.

My all-time favorite film is 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I reckon the scenes that have stuck with me the most over time are either any of the ones involving the monolith, or the sequence dealing with HAL9000's deactivation. Some other favorites are the likes of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium by Wojciech Has, from which I'd likely call out the morning prayer sequence as one of the film's highlights, and Shohei Imamura's Black Rain, from which I'd bring up two scenes, one involving the protagonist's wife seeing their daughter remove tufts of hair from her head as cause of radiation and so on, and a scene where the neighbour's monologue about PTSD seamlessly blends into another traumatic episode as seen through his perspective. Brazil is yet another and I agree with Gromnir regarding Tuttle's death, very evocative. Here's my full top 100, for anyone interested: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/algroth_89/top-100-films/ Finally I would also mention one of my favorite film sequences of all time, being the ballet from The Red Shoes. Absolutely magnificent:

I smell a Fant4stic.

Yeah, the blurbs make these sound like they're pretty compact adventures, but I could be wrong - I would love to see a full-fledged expansion with an expansive story of its own however, much like the one spanning across both White March DLCs or even something like Mask of the Betrayer instead.

You know what I meant lol....xD Of course I did. Anyhow, in all seriousness with regards to the main topic, I have a personality that naturally tends towards rather intense and short-lived monomanias, and sometimes that can pair itself with gaming. I think I can be a videogame addict at times but I don't think that is at the heart of the problem, when the same occurs for just about everything I start to focus some attention on. I have a tendency to go into certain streaks at full speed and continue until I burn myself out of it and find another monomania to occupy the former's place - so sometimes it's film, sometimes music, sometimes literature, sometimes gaming... Right now I feel it's streaming though that is pretty interlinked with gaming too.

There's a few I haven't played in that list but really want to, like Ni no kuni and the Persona games... But of those that I have, I think the best one is hands down Chrono Trigger so I'd advise going with it I suppose.

No, I'm not a degenerate. The 90s called, they want their pot hysteria back.

The typo here made me laugh, although if you do find a way to make games breed that would be great: we could start a selective breeding programme to produce the best games possible. It doesn't need to be a program, just mash Obsidian and Trojka together and BAM! *sigh* I really miss Trojka....but am really glad Obsidian didn't share their fate. Still, the three geniuses should get hired by Obsidian. Well, they've hired two of them at least... They did? Which two tho? But damn, really can't wait for Deadfire now.....I mean, couldn't wait anyways, but now that I know Trojka is in Obsidian (Or Dvojka now, lol)....and with so much money and stuff, I know they're gonna deliver something amazing! I loved PoE, but I have a feeling Deadfire is gonna be my favourite game of all times. ^^ ... Didn't know a due from Trojka is in Obsidian now! Thanks for sharing! Tim Cain was already part of Obsidian since, if I recall correctly, 2012, so he's already worked on South Park: Stick of Truth, Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny if I'm not mistaken - but Leonard Boyarsky came on board recently and both of them are working on a new as of yet 'secret' RPG at Obsidian, which means they are not on the Deadfire team. But I'm expecting some pretty big news about this post-Deadfire release, maybe this year. Here's a few threads speculating on this project: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94281-obsidian-teasing-about-a-new-project-on-twitter/ https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95951-the-outer-worlds-trademarks-obsidians-aaa-rpg/ And here's the Take Two Private Division announcement which touches briefly on this project at roughly 1:35 (they'll be publishing it):

The typo here made me laugh, although if you do find a way to make games breed that would be great: we could start a selective breeding programme to produce the best games possible. It doesn't need to be a program, just mash Obsidian and Trojka together and BAM! *sigh* I really miss Trojka....but am really glad Obsidian didn't share their fate. Still, the three geniuses should get hired by Obsidian. Well, they've hired two of them at least...

This isn't Dark Souls, I shouldn't be guessing about the intent of the Merchant from the Old Rebpublic who is trying to convince me to help them sink a Principi vessel. Some vague and open ended dialog is fine, basing your entire game around it? I hope your game isn't very dialog or story heavy, otherwise it will make little to no sense. Case in point, no one made rave reviews of Hotline Miami because of the story. It was the gameplay and the soundtrack that sold it. You can't maintain a tight solid narrative, and have large amounts of open ended dialog with unclear meaning at the same time. Deadfire is a story driven RPG, it needs a tight solid narrative. I think you are taking my above remark to extremes - I never said that all lines should be vague or open to multiple interpretations, I said that *some* interactions could benefit from this approach and that full voice-over could potentially work against it due to setting an explicit delivery or tone. In all honesty you probably wouldn't run across the risk of misinterpretation in most encounters anyhow provided the game is competently written (which, in Obsidian's case, they usually are). Likewise I don't think tonal or implicit ambiguity necessarily works against the tightness of narrative, that would be more if the literal or explicit meaning in plot points and certain key situations are made unclear which is not the kind of "open interpretation" I was referring to.

Somehow I read that as "I do like to drink like a monster" instead.

You also just hit on another subtle reason why VO is generally better than no VO. You can easily misinterpret a written statement if the language is not plainly clear. For example, simple statements like "Good god!" The person saying it could be expressing shock, or frustration, or even making reference to an attractive person they see. To some extent you can figure it out if you know the rest of the conversation, but that takes work and you could still potentially get it wrong. That is also just a two word statement, imagine if the writer is trying to capture a long but subtle conversation where the meaning is not implicit in the words themselves? With VO you will immediately be able to tell the intent of the speaker because of tone of their voice, because tone is actually a huge part of conversation. It's a bit of a double-edged sword, I'd say, because on one hand you can aid in avoiding misinterpretations, but on the other you run into the issue of overlining or unilateralizing the meaning to dialogue that might have best been served by letting the player fill in the tone he felt it more natural or appropriate to the dynamic between both characters instead. A case in point here would be NWN 2, where the original campaign often suffered the issue of overshooting the enthusiasm with which lines were read, and where characters like Sand or that pyromaniac sorceress would respond in a widely fluctuating mishmash of tones that didn't often correlate to your current stance with them (i.e. be on very bad terms with eachother but respond jovially at a compliment or choice they agree with). And generally I'm of the opinion that deliberate ambiguity is a good thing and Pillars would have better been served with more of it. So I welcome tactics that leave interpretation a bit more open too. Though I do agree that plain ole misinterpretation can be a problem if the meaning of a particular exchange was meant to be pretty deliberate and everyone was interpreting otherwise, or not sure in what tone they were meant. In my experience at least it's usually more frequent a problem when it comes to player options most of all, and oddly enough I don't think it's particularly better in the case of a fully VO'd game like, say, The Witcher 3 or Horizon Zero Dawn, where the choices offered are short blurbs that don't often say much regarding the actual tone or intention.

I'm not a fan of weed so I won't, but I do have some home-brewed rum from St. Martin that I'll be drinking on the game's release.