marimo

I didn't find them bland but I don't know what "bland" means to others. I don't think every character needs to be a high concept wall o'text to be interesting, even though I did enjoy Durance and GM in the first game.

Well I never played the White March expansions so I'm not sure how it compares there but I think I spent about 50 hours in PoE1 and 70 in PoE2. I always do every sidequest I come across and listen to all the VO lines, but I'm not 100% completionist in any game so there'll be some small stuff left over.

It's not just you, apparently the companion stuff is expensive. But it's also something a lot of players care about. I definitely would've liked to see more.

Well that's what save scumming is for!

I fed the crew stuff that gives negative morale until I ran out, then just fed them nothing. I went to the edge of the map and just set my ship to go back and forth in straight lines until morale dipped low enough to trigger a mutiny, then I picked the attack option.

Love: Eder, Aloth, Tekehu, Serafen, Rekke Eder and Aloth were favorites in the first game and I still feel pretty much the same about them although both were bugged for me. Tekehu and Serafen are very amusing and have some interesting stuff going on underneath their facades that keeps them from being one-note, and I loved their voices. Rekke...I was really not expecting to love any sidekick character, but here we are. There's still not a lot of content to him, but it's more than the others and what is there is fascinating. He also seems very charming and his voice and portrait are fantastic. Like: Pallegina, Maia, Xoti, Mirke, Ydwin Pallegina I picked up pretty late in the game and Maia's classes overlapped with my Watcher's so I never got their rep above 0 and hardly used them. I might feel differently about them in another playthrough. I liked Xoti more than I thought I would, but she wasn't one of my favorites. Mirke's amusing and Ydwin's situation is interesting and I like both of their portraits a lot aesthetically. Neutral: Konstanten Couldn't stop thinking of him as like having Stanley from The Office in the party, which is kind of amusing but I still didn't feel much about him one way or the other. Dislike: Fassina There just wasn't much to her other than seeming like she hates everything.

Dammit, now I can't unhear "Part Of Your World" in his voice/accent... I've been picturing this sort of thing in my head since I pulled him out of the water: I'd make a fanart if my art skills weren't atrophied to nothing, lol This seems like a nice first post in this forum for me- Yesssss quality first post!

Dammit, now I can't unhear "Part Of Your World" in his voice/accent... I've been picturing this sort of thing in my head since I pulled him out of the water: I'd make a fanart if my art skills weren't atrophied to nothing, lol

It gets lonely and boring on the high seas and you're traveling around with a group of exceptionally attractive and powerful people.

That does look like an Eothas godlike, interesting!

Maybe it's just me but Rekke reminds me of The Little Mermaid. You fish him out of the sea There's a language barrier He's all alone in a strange land, the only one of his kind The hair, obviously Anyway if he's looking for a comb I have just the one

The god-like can't bear children, so perhaps their libido is diminished? Counterpoint: Tekehu. lol

I think the changes she was referring to when talking about her teen years were the usual puberty ones. She was born looking like an avian godlike, and then she got the standard girl stuff on top of that while surrounded exclusively by men, and that was too much for her to handle. There aren't if guidebook vol. 1 is to be believed. They always have obviously deformed heads and hands at the very least. The weirdest part of the whole chimes business to me was that if the Watcher is a Death godlike they already have Berath's chime in them. Why would she need to put an additional one in? I realise that gameplay-wise we don't choose our race until that scene is finished, but story-wise it felt off. And then Eothas goes all generous on you and says "Hey I've just removed your chime, you are no longer tied to Berath! Rejoice!". Right, yaaay. How about that one chime that I had in me since birth though? I went back and watched the conversation again just now (starts at 10:15). Seems like she's talking about both the usual puberty changes and godlike related changes and she finds both distressing, but severing the chime reversed some of the godlike changes and that was enough to keep her from killing herself. Though it also sounds like she's been obviously godlike her whole life so maybe godlike are born with some of their physical characteristics but those become more pronounced at puberty? That's a good point about death godlike Watchers that I never thought of. That would be kinda weird.

I'm assuming when he took over Waidwen that it looked similar to when he took over the statue: the glowing eyes and stars and flames on his head. That's a neat fanart, though I wonder if Eothas will just look like the statue going forward because well, the design already exists and it's pretty cool.

Haha his hairstyle is identical to that picture too

I'm very curious as to what an Eothasian godlike would look like, and also what Eothas himself looks like in god form. I don't think we've seen anything besides the giant statue form, and the statue was fashioned to look like Maros Nua after all, not Eothas. I'm also curious about chimes, since it seems like that's what causes the physical changes to godlike. Why are Skaen godlike deformed at birth but Pallegina apparently didn't start to change until puberty? Would the Watcher have started to turn into a death godlike if Eothas hadn't removed Berath's chime? Are there godlike who never develop physical changes at all? I have so many questions.

Magic and resurrection in GoT is really not all that rare in the story itself. It's established that it's rare in the world as a whole and that the characters are important people and therefore outliers, but really there's a lot of magic going on there.

Pallegina's kinda like Cassandra without a soft side I guess? They are both dissatisfied by the things they are born into and want to distance themselves from (being godlike/a noble), and they are both very dutiful and characterized by an absolutely unshakeable faith. I don't really think the DA characters are that similar to the PoE ones, but it's fun to come up with commonalities.

It seems like you are operating under certain assumptions that I don't agree with. I don't agree that gods or magic make a story less dark or gritty. Less grounded, sure, but you can have dark or light, mature or immature, stories with magic. I also don't think that so-called "adult" content e.g. sex, cursing, violence, drug use is diametrically opposed to progressive values. It's about how those things are presented within the story. You can write a progressive story that takes place in a very bigoted world, it depends on whether that content is presented critically or uncritically, and whether it is gratuitous or purposeful, and if it is purposeful, then what message it's conveying.

Aim'Spirente, but they're all very good. The shanties were one of my favorite things in the game.

I'm not sure how you missed it but Oghren's thing is that he's like your stereotypical drunken fantasy dwarf but the reason he drinks so much is because he is an utterly broken man. Not sure you want that as a shining example of men being men. Also Oghren was written by a woman.

Women who aren't socially conditioned to coddle men? Men unafraid of straight male rejection? The absolute horror. Congrats on the pearl-clutchingest critique of a game I've ever read.

There is nothing anti-feminist or unprogressive about warmth or vulnerability as character traits for characters of any gender. Also, reputation levels max out at +2/-2 and Xoti has a full romance. You can look it up on YouTube. Is it a bug then that it never happened for me? I did all the character quest, all the dialogue options, and had a decent reputation and it never became a courting, let alone a relationship. Perhaps I should report this somehow if that's the case. I agree, although I am not a feminist. I mean really anything can be considered 'feminist" or not depending on how you spin it. But because under intersectionality characters become considered avatars for their demographic by the audience, writers tend to stray away from giving their characters any weakness and therefor depth or room to grow. If a character is too stereotypically feminine, as xoti's traits might be classed, then that can be seen as "disempowering". I mean that's not my perspective, I've just seen this sort of commentary plenty of times, that the preference is for "strong characters". Although I am sure this is also just related to the public hunger for wish forfillment, of which straight men certainly had their fill in the 80s. It very well could be a bug? I don't know. Either that or you expected more romance content than is in the game. That isn't a definition of intersectionality that I'm familiar with. It just means that women's experiences with oppression are not uniform and are inextricably linked to other aspects of who they are like social class, ethnic background, nationality, disability, etc. A "strong character" is too nebulously defined to really be a worthwhile category. Maybe if you gave specific examples of writers, media or commentary you are referring to?