Wormerine

Why? Deadfire was moved to a new engine, so I imagine going back and redesigning/patching PoE engine would require a decent amount of recourses. You remake PoE1 in PoE2 engine, but again, I doubt it would be as simple as porting levels over (hint - I don't know how programming works). Considering PoE, in spite of some minor flaws, is in a pretty good state it all seems like a waste of time and manpower.

He could just show up in an epilogue "Hey, I heard Eothas got resurrected and I travelled all the way here to finally find out... oh, he is dead already...?"

Interesting. It would make sense for him to join you back in Dyrwood in other two endings though. It is possible that if he traveled to the Aedyre empire he will not join you in Deadfire or he will come on his own regardless. All of the returning companions should have different states depending on how they ended.

I am not sure I agree. From a pacing perspective dropping you in the middle of the biggest city, with the most going on, right at the beginning is actually pretty bad. There is a reason games like the Elder Scrolls always start in a small village, that tells you how to get to a nearby decent town, that then sort of mentions where the big city is. You want to ease the player in, you don't want to drop them in the middle of everything immediately.There is no doubt the pacing of Eternity 1 was bad, and it took too long to get to the main city/technically second town. But Baldur's Gate 2 really wasn't any better. Get through a dungeon and poof, here is god knows how many quests, 5+ new party members, tons of stores, more lore and goings on in the first 3 hours than most games have in the first 10, etc etc. It was content overload. It would be more ideal if your first landing in deadfire is just a smaller town, that happens to be close to Dyrwood than all the rest, and happens to be a gateway or trading port with light faction presence of multiple types. This enables you to get your initial faction/region exposure on a small scale, "restock", and get some intel on where you could go within deadfire next. I don't know, BG2 dropping you in Ankhala worked pretty damn well. I don't mind having a lot to choose from if story accommodates you walking away from the main path. It works especially well, when doing multiple walk throughs as you feel restrictions more when you replay the game. It all depends on how th city is designed. I think they mentioned that the Neketaka will be a sort of a hub, which you will return to often and which will house all the major factions. It would b nice if at first your access in Neketaka was rather limited and it would expand as you get to know factions, and progress the story. My guess is - you open with a prologue where Caed Nua is destroyed, part of your soul gets sucked into the statue (?), you buy a ship, transfer what's is left of the Steward onto the ship, grab Eder and go to Deadfire. You will probably head directly to a port in Neketaka, or have some additional between content. my guess would be Netkeaka as they said that wanted to open up the game a bit more this time around. Going straight to the main hub and being able to head out in any direction you want does make sense.

It depends on how well it is done) For example I much prefer Warcraft3 and Witcher series in Russian language over original. I guess, after all original Witcher is in Polish Well, sort of. Didn't they write script for Witcher2&3 in english first to make it more natural? (I heard 1st one was quite a mess... can't tell, played all of them in PL)

Closer to Viciona, which has an even stranger fan base that BruceVC is a part of. I LOVE VICONIA.

I must admit. The first time I played through Baldur's Gate2 I completely forgot about the main storyline. I vividly remember after hours of play and sidemissions, adding another companion to my team, and my character warned them that he is after Irenicus... "Oh right" I thought. "I completely forgot about that." I wouldn't say that the plot of BG2 was bad. Irenicus made of an engaging adversary. He was fun and interesting enough. Not every story has to be deep to be entertaining. But I do agree that what drew me in the most, was the feeling of adventuring. You had this big adversary and story to do, but you also did side gigs and they were stories within themselves. Not deep stories. But they were varied, surprising and fun. Sneaking through secret entrance of a castle, to open the gates and retake the keep from trolls, finding a murderer, who kills and skins his victims, being manipulated by a dragon, underground cult of the Unseeing. All good stuff. It wasn't deep, but it had character. For me that is what was lacking in DA:O (let me tell you for the next 15 minutes in detail about your generic and uninspired culture.) And Elder Scrolls. I decided to give another shot to Skyrim thanks to my reawakened RPG need. I just don't give a crap about anything in that world. Boring quests, boring NPC, boring enviroments, boring gameplay. I don't hate it. But playing it feels like a chore.

I'm a fan of voice-over. I'd like it if the game was 100% voiced. I don't like partial voice-over like Pilars 1 did. It's annoying and distracting. If I'm to choose between partial voice-over or no voice-over I'd go for the latter. I hope "more" voice-over though is more like full voice-over. Like all main character/quest conversations are voiced and only side-stuff left un-voiced. I am fine with partial VO as long as they will make sure there is no narration before on in the middle of recorded lines (like they already did in expansions.)

I'm a fan of voice-over. I'd like it if the game was 100% voiced. I don't like partial voice-over like Pilars 1 did. It's annoying and distracting. If I'm to choose between partial voice-over or no voice-over I'd go for the latter. I hope "more" voice-over though is more like full voice-over. Like all main character/quest conversations are voiced and only side-stuff left un-voiced. I'm quite OK with partial VO. Listening to the same few voices in e.g. Skyrim is getting on me nerves But such a 3D sandbox *needs* full voice-overs more than an isometric game. So imho: partial VO in Pillars - OK full VO in Skyrim - OK full VO in Original Sin Enhanced Edition - NOT OK awww... I did enjoy VO in D:OS a lot. It was very silly, but I prefered to listen to bad jokes rather than read them.

Replayability! )

How on Earth did you come up with this idea? Fulvano islands will be available for everyone, just as the Endless Paths of Od Nua from the first PoE (And yes, the first island with Balefire Beacon is home to captain Furrante of the Principi sen Patrena). AFAIK the only backer related content might be an item or two for those who supported the game development via Fig or PayPal during the campaign. The same story was with the first PoE: there was a ring called Gaun's Pledge, a cape of the Obsidian Order, and the little Space Pig animal companion. And the odd thing is that I still got all those items and an achievement even though I bought it on gog with the release of white march part 1.

I don't understand why would someone be annoyed by it. In my book, it was A perfect examples of a stretchgoal done well. I really enjoyed VO n PoE and I am happy to have more of it in the sequel. It is however an expensive thing to do and the game still works well without it. Just like an orchestral soundtrack, it adds quality and polish to the game, but it won't kill it, if it won't be reached. Happy it was there and happy that it was reached.

Overall, I do support the idea a lot. One of the things which made Baldur's Gate 2 so memorable to me is how varied it was. I remember investigation quests just as much as epic combat ones. And with scripted interaction system they really could pull something special. Even if they do stick to using all, or most, of the "pillars" of PoE (combat, exploration, conversations) in majority of the quests, W3: Heart of Stone's wedding quest nicely show how you can shake up quests while still using established murder-related mechanics.

The spell retargeting looks super helpful. I wonder if it would be possible to simply drag the "fireball" icon, which shows previous spell location. Might a bit more intuitive.

Haha, that reminds me when I was sneaking around in Arcanum. In the middle of the night. Surrounded by huge, shining shield spell. No one saw a thing.

Nice compilation. I am a bit confused about the stealth thing. They seem to have sight of line and some kind of detection ring around them. It seems that even when coming from behind an enemy you get dtected. Does the ring mean that they can hear your footsteps? If you don't move, will it still detect you (might be a laud breather). Maybe if you have high sneaking you will be able to mov unnoticed from behind, but always detected what moving in front of an enemy. I am very curious. I love stealth.

What I liked the most about the campain is that when it started I decided that it is silly to throw my money at the game, which won't be released for a while and purchased existing one (Tyranny.) It made me so hyped that I threw my money at PoE2 anyway, reinstalled PoE1 and somehow found enough time to beat it before the campain ended. So I liked that. On the more serious note, I really liked the stretchgoals. First of all, early stretchgoals were the essencial ones (multiclassing, subclasses), the other one benefit the game, but they don't change the nature of the game, just expand on existing concepts and polish. I also thought that the updates were really well planned, making you excited about the game, while keeping things vague enough and keeping the best reveals till the end. Why didn't we reach more stretchgoals? Seamonsters look cool, but fishing - not so much. 8th companion? It would be nice, but I am happy with announced roster of companions and sidekicks. Also the fact that Obsidian prefered to add 4 sidekicks, make me think that they have enough work with announced 7 companions to do another one. and 5 million is a lot.

My life for Aiur!

I would prefer, if you simply had to choose fate of your companions and relevant choices before starting a game in a neat, clean menu.

I know a few people from Tyranny are working on Deadfire, most notably a couple of the lead writers. I know they're implementing a couple of UI elements from Tyranny onto Deadfire, but we'll see how much. That said I personally was not too keen on the 3D portraits, much prefer a more traditional aesthetic for them. They are working on new UI, but how much it will differ from original PoE remains to be seen. The conversations will use simpler water color portraits for all characters.

From what was told, you will be able either to import your save file from PoE1, and it will transfer relevant choices from there, or you will be able to "create" one yourself before starting the game. I imagine the choices which will matter in PoE2 are major ones (what happened with companions, relationship with gods, state of keep and dyrwood.) It would be odd, if when creating system they would forbid you from making all relevant choices. We sill see.

To add to that they already fixed the EI game problems of starting fight you are not prepared for. You always notice enemies before they notice you, so as long as you have the autopause set up to pause game as soon as you encounter an enemy (which you absolutely should have), you can easly spot what is coming.

But but but... fallout's UI was horrible. It's clunky as hell, convoluted, managing inventory is a pain. They are not clear on what they do. Th game would only benefit from better UI design. It's not about "dumbing" down - it's about elegance and clarity. Steep learning curve is rarely a good thing. It just means the design isn't good enough. Yeah, there are games where messing up, and figuring how the game works is the point "dark souls" but in most cases it just means the game doesn't explain itself well. Now I am not encouraging handholding, as it is boring, but a well implemented tutorial benefits a game.

And did you ever use whatever you learned in Witcher3? I do agree that PoE is focused on reloading, but it didn't bother me much. I find the weapon load out system enough flexible, to have various weapons prepared for different situations. You cast buffs in combat anyway, so you make the desition on what to cast during the combat anyway. The first time you encounter new enemy, and therefore don't know his weaknesses and strengths are generally forgiving enough you can just push through them.

Baldurs Gate2 worked quite well, and as Josh pointed out many of those characters had limited interactions and no story archs. I do appreciate the choice with companions (not a fan of creating custom party). I think it is a great idea, giving you a solid amount if companions, with relationship system, side quest and a story arch, and a couple additional characters with personality and cool background. If it's written well, it might work very well. After all, not everyone you meet and work with becomes your good buddy. They might just be interesting characters who ally with you for the quest