Big-Ben

They won't poop if you don't feed them.

It's a great feature. I cannot fathom what someone looking through my inventory in the first game would say when they found everything from dogs to space pigs. The fact that this is a lore friendly feature makes it even better.

Goodness me it's going to be great day. I've got some stuff to do for work but once that's done it's going to be a wonderful day.

I see the Watcher x Talking Sword shippers have arrived! (The one in Baldur's Gate talked about gushing fluids and I'm now chuckling at potential dialogue prospects.)

I like it more than the one in the first game. The thing about games like Baldur's Gate was that unless you were in an area that you very much couldn't rest in all you really needed to do is survive a battle and rest up and there wasn't any real consequence (Barring a trash mob attacked you in a dungeon.). Obsidian has added some challenge here alongside the potential for buffs if need be. Food as I recall wasn't used by many people in the first game and now there's incentive. Barring you're a disaster at management I think this will mesh well with the ship mechanic as well. Resting is no longer a fix all and I think that's just great.

An entirely new difficulty called "Bad Ass" where the game just kills you as soon as you load in.

I think Wael exemplifies this. The chief god of learning and scholars is also the god of ignorance and secrets. That's the way you design a pantheon if you don't want people finding uncomfortable answers. Wondering how certain plot points at the end of Pillars will play into the sequel now that you mention this. A great many people in religious roles would want many things kept quiet. Or perhaps I'm cynical. Anyone wonder how it will effect priests moving forward?

Writing lines for people who don't really have much character doesn't really add much in my opinion. I'm very much of the opinion that if a writer can get their point across with less dialogue and descriptions the better. Action is character too. Is this realistic? Certainly not. Having sidekicks that act like stoic antiheroes in Spaghetti Westerns all the time is silly but I'm more prone to that than some guy who mopes around and tells me endless expository diatribes about how much the world sucks or something. It's not that exposition is bad it's just that I'd want the dialogue coming at me to be good and not armchair philosophy. You can't do that all the time and you most certainly can't do it on a budget. A smaller set of very defined companions fits that role perfectly in my opinion. I want to make it clear I get what you're saying it's just that I feel it's too much to do on a budget. Stoic dude in the corner is better than Bootleg Schopenhauer etc etc.

I'm speaking only for myself here but I vastly prefer a smaller group of tightly written characters than gallery of folks I'll never use and engage with. Sidekicks are not the soup de jour but they aren't rush jobs either. It takes time to develop characters and no doubt if we had a smorgasbord of folks to choose from I'm more than certain they'd have several that weren't really all that interesting to many of us. I suppose what I'm saying is that sometimes it's better to have less than more. Having a character you know has some semblance of a background that you'll use strikes me as a better gamble than a character who doesn't have the same level of care as others that people don't like. For instance take a look at Mass Effect 2. Does anyone really like Jacob the same way they do the other companions? He's a character sure but he really doesn't have much use other than exposition. How many remember the companions from Baldur's Gate who weren't popular as well? My intent is not to be combative but rather to say that resources should be used on things that can be made into great content. Spreading resources on paper thin sidekicks just strikes me as as waste of time. One of the nice things about having a limited budget is that you have to choose very carefully where to spend your resources.

The manual for Shadows of Amn was rather amusing. Having catty comments from Elminster was really great to read alongside descriptions of all the nasty spells you could cast. No doubt some snark will make it into the written materials for Deadfire. I miss manuals terribly.

It was clarified yesterday that it was being worked on yesterday in the Livestream. When news comes out we'll certainly know. I can't imagine it'll be a Herculean effort.

I imagine Open World as a concept is going to actually get worse in a lot of ways because advancements will lead to to larger, emptier worlds that developers simply cannot populate with enough content to really be engaging. What's a whole continent for instance if most of it is just fields and mountains where the only encounter you may have while travelling is an animal attack? Perhaps it's wishful thinking but I hope fatigue sets in soon and those ambitions are scaled back and more manageable RPG games (Of any subgenre.) are made in their place.

Weird cults are always a joy in these types of games because they fit so well within lore. I mean we've all busted them up before in these types of games but I'm especially looking forward to this. Eldritch horrors are great too. I was hoping Obsidian would dabble in that being near the sea and all.

Was pleased to see a less serious weapon like the broom show up. I wouldn't quite classify it as a joke or gag weapon but it's certainly amusing.

I confess the thought of bringing this into my home amuses me as I now have to make room for it. I'll have a little more time to prepare!

I realize this pretty heavy for a first post but I'd like to say something about understanding and writing people. The very idea that a person cannot come to understand another person and talk about their issues is so utterly ridiculous to me and I'll explain why. I'm going to use a very dark example from my own life to illustrate this. At first glance I appear normal. I'm white. Male. All that stuff. No would suspect that I'm a victim of sexual violence perpetrated by a woman. It's a core part my identity and has caused numerous issues in my life. Some of it is very serious. For a long time I kept it quiet because I thought no one would ever understand what happened to me or would care. I was very wrong. I finally confided to a friend I met online about this. She is a woman and lives in entirely different country. Speaks English alongside her native tongue. I at first thought I was going to be discarded and thrown away. But I wasn't. I was embraced and she's done everything in her power to try and make me comfortable. Everything. She has listened instead of judged. She has uplifted instead of discarded. Our friendship has only grown with this revelation. The understanding between us has changed ten fold. I would trust her ten times over to write my story because she is empathetic enough to understand my situation. I'd be happy to elaborate if need be. The very idea that a person cannot understand another person and write about them is wrong. I'm sorry to be so blunt. The key word people need to learn is empathy.