molotov.

We don't have CR companions, we have CR portraits and voice sets and that's it. If you want a character from CR you have to create it yourself. Also Josh mentioned that there will be banters for sidekicks, but only a little, probably only comments about something here and there, not conversation to other companions or sidekicks. And it is quite clear that you can have conversation with your sidekicks, which is more than normal adventurers you create. Well... I thought it was quite clear that they would have some sort of banter, but there you have it.

Nice comment. Not a single explanation or argument.

Well, just because you have emotions doesn't mean you have to blurt out the first thing that comes into your mind. You could have said you were disappointed perhaps. Calling them lazy is insulting. But to adress your point, my suggestion is that you calm down and play the actual game first before going all bananas about it. It could be just as bad as you imagine but it could also be a lot better. Make a fair judgement when you have the game in your hands. 250.000 for 4 portraits and some cosmetics are a insult to me aswell. Why? Josh already said "they have little to no banter", he said it not me you can check the stream if you need any further proof. And I have to say that the V.O. for the NPCs were bad to regular.

I think the smooth/feisty/etc voicesets for PoE1 characters create a fair degree of personality. So they'll have their own responses and a quest that might tell us what matters to them... or what messes they get tangled in. Sure, it leaves a bit to the player's imagination, but it's still far from a tavern merc that you didn't have to pay for. I think sidekicks are a good idea: In PoE1, if you want a priest for your party, you better like Durance or you better hire one. You want two priests for your party, you'll need to hire at least one. And for mercs you have to invent everything yourself to give them personality. The more sidekicks (or companions, if we disregard the money issue) there are, the more party compositions we can experiment with without resorting to complete mercs. Of course fully fleshed our characters are cooler to have, but how many sidekicks can we get for the price of one companion? Especially considering companion production costs scale linearly since every companion needs to interact with every other companion. Going from 1 to 2 companions is 1 added set of interactions, going from 2 to 3 is 2 added, from 3 to 4 is 3 added... Your example wasn't a good one... because there is actually only one priest in Deadfire, so you like her or you hire one. I'm not asking for full companions I'm asking for a couple of banters. Actually... I'm not even asking I'm just spreading the information, 250.000 of your backer money was used to create 4 portraits, 4 faces and 4 quests. In the first game the stronghold and the endless paths of Caed Nua was created with a 200,000 stretch goal.

"Then I proceed to copy and paste this information, after no reply I got angry and said "well that is just lazy", and then Josh proceed to answer "actually banter is a lot of work". I was angry that is why I said that, but I wanted to put this information here because I thought that Josh answer was a bit strange... he didn't say anything about not having enough time or not enough resources he said that it would be a lot of work. 250.000 dollars. You don't think that is enough for some banters?

So wait is more voice work good or bad I'm getting mixed signals here Wow, you were fast! I made some edittings but my idea is still the same. Yes, mixed signals everywhere, and to be completely honest some of the V.O. on the last stream was bad to regular. A old lady with a 30 years old voice is an example.

Last stream josh stated that "sidekicks will have little to no banter". Then I asked him this: "so the sidekicks are just custom characters with some cosmetics?" he gave this reply: "this was precisely what the stretch goal said", so I made some research and no, that was not what the stretch goal said. "Before joining your ranks, Sidekicks start out as unique NPCs integral to specific quests, complete with their own personalities and looks, and they may offer to join your party as a reward for completing their quest. Just like companions, these new characters have a custom portrait and voice sound-set. However, unlike companions, they do not have their own vision quest and will not participate in the relationship system outlined in our last stretch goal. We know you love more choice and flexibility when creating your parties, and Sidekicks are a way for us to give you that choice by providing a larger roster of characters to choose." It was stated that they would not have a personal quest, I can understand that perfectly a personal quest is a huge work and need resources, and that they would not participate in the relationship system, again totally understandable, but no banters? How they will show their personalities without nothing to say? Then I proceed to copy and paste this information, after no reply I got angry and said "well that is just lazy", and then Josh proceed to answer "actually banter is a lot of work". There you have it, a 250k stretch goal for 4 portraits and 4 custom characters. A portrait is 60 dollars Obsidian, someone overpriced you a little bit. You can argue that they didn't have the resources to make some banters but they already proved that wrong, they had the extra resources to make the full V.O. something that no one asked, not to mention that the stretch goal was 250k, that is not enough for 80 lines of dialogues?

Necromancers are chaotic neutral or evil animancers and, since it's impossible to have an animancer class because it's a profession, it's impossible to be a necromancer.

The first dlc sounds underwhelming, but that will depend on the sort of doomsday cult we are talking about. And I'm a little disappointed I was expecting new companions or at least the development of our sidekicks. The second dlc sounds satisfactory, always good to have a combat-focused dlc on any RPG. The third dlc sounds promising but with a grain of salt, I only say that because I don't know if I'll like the new companions.

Well... what about people that liked the micromanagment? **** them?

Well, I tend to rotate between the characters, I see the context of the next quest and choose the character according, for example, act III I had Pallegina and Hiravias for their quests. But now with the relationship system... things will get messy. My favourite party was Me - fighter tank -, Éder - dps -, Hiravias/Pallegina/Devil - to choose between them was a pain... I really liked all of them, dps and a little bit of tank -, Durance - horrible healer but the only one -, Kana - dps and for summons and also for his commentaries they were hilarious -, Aloth - wizards are OP and Aloth is a swell lad.

You're right, but the thing is... do we know that? I don't really follow the streams too often, so I apologize if I'm wrong right off the bat, but I feel confident enough to say that - right now - we don't know for sure whether any of that will happen. Is what you're describing really the case here? Yes, Josh stated that we will get to know his story on his last Q&A - a really weak Q&A tbh. Maybe we will get to know his story through the game, like we did with Durance. But, like someone already said, why would I take a sidekick if I can take a full companion with a relationship system? I would only consider that if the sidekick would be really funny and interesting, maybe getting the sidekicks into the relationship system would fix their problem.

Not to knock on Rekke and any potential arcs that he may have, but I was under the impression that he was supposed to be Deadfire's Chewbacca. And by that, I mean that it's much easier to write extra material for a guy who literally cannot communicate with the rest of the cast. You think it's easier to write something for a character that speaks a different language? I think it's far harder to write something that can't be communicated through words, let me explain myself. His arc will have to receive more details and attention because he can't just reveal his story by speaking, he will have to find a different way to communicate that, learning our language perhaps? Or even painting? So basically I think it will be more difficult because the writer can't just dump lore on our faces with a wall of text, he will have to show that in other way... again... a lot of work for a sidekick. And hey... the team talk about Ydwin and Rekke so much that you people don't even know the name of the other two sidekicks. Don't google it.

Yes, they appear to be younger now and they have also changed Ydwin portraits 2 times by now... uh... a lot of work for a sidekick don't you think? I kind of agree this is very strange. For one thing we know there was a major push to make Ydwin a full companion, and there has been multiple points on the forums where people were confused about the difference between a sidekick and companion and said things like "why even use a sidekick if you have full companions or full custom?" It was like they were a so so middle ground. Meanwhile Obsidian is using this as a big announcement and to push more sales, which it seems to have worked. We don't know how well it has worked, but it has definitely had a positive effect. So if Critical Roles inclusion is such a big deal, and good enough to be an actual selling point for the game... why would you give a smaller sidekick role to two of them? Also why is there so much focus on Rekke and Ydwin who both have actually had almost as much coverage as full companions at this point. In fact, didn't Ydwin get a full on character reveal, before some of the "full companions"? If this were Denmark I would definitely be smelling the fish market, if you feel me. Ydwin was the only sidekick to have a full body reveal - it's on Pillars of Eternity facebook -, and also Josh talks a lot about Rekke on live Q&As. He stated, on his last Q&A, that we will get to know the reason to why Rekke is the way he is and, to me, that was quite strange, why give a closure or a character development this huge for a sidekick? Have you guys realized that the other two sidekicks don't even get mentioned by Josh or the team that much and none of the critical role artists are making V.O. for them? The plot tickens...

Yes, they appear to be younger now and they have also changed Ydwin portraits 2 times by now... uh... a lot of work for a sidekick don't you think?

Let me elaborate more on my previous statement, why I think that V.O. is good on main questlines and companions dialogues. The main story has a narration focus, sure you have your choices but the main purpose, in the end, will be achieved, it don't matter if you choose 50 small things differently than me your end will be one of the 3 major endings, a good, sort of good and bad, that is why I think V.O. on the main questline should work, because you don't have a huge pool of choices, now for the companions. Personality is something really important on a person, that is the main reason why you like someone, and the voice is one way to demonstrate that personality, albeit not the only one and not the most important, but it's a huge gain in terms of showing characteristics in a video game, you can demonstrate how a character is by the way he says "hello", doing this you can avoid a 2 pages long text just with some good V.O. that is why I think V.O. on companions should work. Now why I don't think it works with generic quests. When leveling my character through generic quests I expect something interesting and a lot of options. It's the only time that the quests designers can go wild, they don't have to fully respect the main story, they can create their own little lore, where they can invest their personality. One quest from POE 1 comes to my mind, The Wailing Banshee - the banshee on the tower in Defiance bay -, if you had perception - both you or your character - the quest could end in such an interesting way, you could learn about the lore, the nature of the banshee - exactly how banshees are created - and help give closure to a loving story, way better than just attack and kill the poor banshee, that is what I expect with generic quests and V.O. don't work with a lot of choices. So... I only hope I can help a banshee with their depression again.

Important dialogues, like companions and main questline dialogues, should receive V.O., but V.O. for generic quests is just a tremendous waste of money.

In this video made by nerdcommando: It shows a street fighter rogue doing 70+ damage each hit.

11 in total - 7 companions 4 sidekicks -and I hereby say what my intuition is telling me: the sidekicks will be much more appreciated than the companions resulting in a violent revolt on the forums. Konstanten will be a true dwarf. Fassina will have the best one liners. Rekke will be the best character in the game. And Ydwin... oh Ydwin... she will be the main reason for the revolution.

Josh stated on one of the twitch Q&A that the grand majority of players play on medium and hard. Hence why the game is balanced towards the medium and hard difficult and we can find some weird events on PotD and easy difficulties.

Yes, Nerdcommando has demonstrated that issue in his new video, because the early talents are so bad a multiclass character will suffer from level 1-10, the chanter is a great example, possible the best single class in the game, the chanter has some great summons in the early stages, so a chanter level 6 will be able to be much more effective on a fight than a chanter/wizard level 8. This can be fixed by introducing some good talents on the first and second line of skills and talents, but then again the single class will suffer, good luck Josh!

General balance of enemy encounters: Will the bosses be bosses now? In the withe march II the Kraken was a disappoint, that random monk fellow was way more powerfull than him.

It will be possible to mod the game so that we can have the 6 party members back? If so it would be bad for the programming? e.g: dialogues of the sixth member would not trigger because the game would not recognize they.

Whilst playing the first game I found myself quite sad in numerous moments, even though Hiravias and Kana's dialogues can be quite cheerful, the companions and story of the first game were depressing, will Deadfire provide us with moments of joy? A good and mundaine talk with our party members? A night in the tavern? Perhaps some jokes? A funny quest that will not end with the death of a little kid?

A trash filter? What is trash for you guys? Any normal equipment? What happens when you start fighting enemies with lvl 6-9 that only drop exceptional or fine quality items? Oh, let me guess a filter for the filter? These people and their damn fixations for MMORPG mechanics...