Achilles

I think the fact thaf the “boss fight” happens right when you arrive (and isn’t vs the antagonist) really throws people. Tyranny did something kinda similar and people rail against its ending also.

Oh no Quality Obsidian moderator material.I don't think you understand the function of a moderator. Im trying to remember but wasn't it fairly easy to get yourself into a postion where the passage of time simply travelling to a new location would kill you before you got there? There were multiple strategies for dealing with spirit hunger. Trying to bounce back and forth between them could lead to trouble, but picking one and sticking with it was pretty easy and took a lot of the edges off.

If the threat of certain death doesn’t motivate you, then I don’t know what the writers could have possibly done to please you. Invent a threatened love interest out of whole cloth? Tell you that you bore offspring in the 5 year gap and then use that to get you going? At some point, I think it’s fair to expect us, the players, to engage. You misunderstood. It does motivate me - it's just that the target of my motivation is different from what the writers intended. I guess I simply don't enjoy being blatantly ordered around under the threat of death. It's the Atlas scenario from Bioshock. I don’t think anyone does. But neither do I think anyone enjoys slowly going insane, and yet that was still the motivation for Pillars 1. If the story was poorly told, then that’s one critique. If the story didn’t spend enough time talking about puppies and this upsets me because I really like puppies, then that’s something else. Sure. Last word is yours.

If the threat of certain death doesn’t motivate you, then I don’t know what the writers could have possibly done to please you. Invent a threatened love interest out of whole cloth? Tell you that you bore offspring in the 5 year gap and then use that to get you going? At some point, I think it’s fair to expect us, the players, to engage.

Well Eothas does have a chunk of your soul that you're wanting back so as not to die, so there's a measure of motivation stemming from that. Not to mention Berath who stuck a kill switch in your chest and tells you not to make her use it. That’s kinda sorta motivating also. Or, for those of us who play nice guys, there’s all the death and destruction to stop. But other than those three things, there’s no agency, drive, or motivation at all.

Who knew that resting was such a hot topic? I’m 20 hours into this playthrough and I think I’ve rested twice.

Because people bitched that factions didn’t matter in the first game. So they built the second game around factions.

“Conclusions” are usually addressed in the third act / part 3. Act 2 / part 2s are for rising tension, which this was.

Given the state of resting in Deadfire I'd completely agree, and I say this as someone who likes resting systems. It's basically just busy work at this point. They’d have to ditch food too, otherwise power gamers would go back to eating the 15 meals before every encounter (which was game-breaking at all)

MMORPG: What kind of content can players expect (i.e. how many new quests)? Will there be any new followers and / or crew to find? Brandon Adler: Beast of Winter adds all of the things you would expect from an Obsidian game – new areas and dungeons to explore, dozens of new items and creatures, and fun, engaging quests. We have also added Vatnir, an Endings godlike the player can convince to follow them into the depths of the White Void. Due to the nature of the DLC, some of the game’s previous companions will also have quite a bit to say. For example, Ydwin, as a pale elf animancer, has a lot to talk about as it relates to the people of the cult, Rymrgand, and the nature of souls. Read more at https://www.mmorpg.com/pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire/interviews/things-will-get-frosty-in-beast-of-winter-we-chat-with-brandon-adler-1000012883#UzXkYDSJXM0eWd2Z.99

How do you measure intention? I’m assuming you mean, “how do we recognize intention”? It can be difficult, but often it’s not. The author who clearly had *a* good idea for *one* book, but clearly got pressured into writing a trilogy. The actor who quits to become a director. The game studio who keeps regurgitating the same game every few years with flashier graphics. Behavior over time tells us boat loads.

Your definition of performer is super wrong. I mean, not correct by any dictionary or commonly accepted standard of the word. A performer doesn't create anything. They perform. Orwell was an actor, director, writer, and producer. He was certainly a performer when he did the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. He was a great artist, but the idea that he was just creating stuff for self-expression is unrealistic. He needed people to buy tickets as well. Beiber could arguably be considered a performer instead of an artist. I do not know what his role is in the creation of his music. I know his producers are given a lot of credit for his success. But regardless, whoever is creating the music is still an artist, no matter how commercial their interests may be. Heck, Shakespeare's later plays go my and more violent because he found that was what sells. Any artist you have ever heard of is in it for more than self-expression. Otherwise why release anything? Performer (intransitive verb) - to give a performance: play. Artists can incorporate performance into their art (i.e. Peter Gabriel), but performers aren’t artists. And yes, artists need to eat, but that doesn’t change the core of my argument (which you did not address): intention matters

There's a difference between someone who creates something as a means of self-expression (an artist) and someone who creates something so that people will consume it (a performer). Orwell wrote Animal Farm because he had something to say. Beiber makes music so that people will buy his albums.

Marketing has little to do with this. Is it so hard to understand that some people - many people actually - prefer Harry Potter to Animal Farm? And if that makes them a lesser person in your eyes, is that their problem, or yours? You are free to have an opinion, as is everyone else, but the moment you try to push your opinion as a fact, you just lose credibility in a discussion. Success IS measured by money, because gaming industry is no different than any other business. Fun does not put food on the table (or a porsche in the garage), but big sales and smart microtransactions do. Look at EA. They treat their players like garbage. They've been voted the worst company in the US a few years in a row. How did it affect their profits? They keep getting bigger. And why? Because they don't need to have a heart to be good at their jobs. I think the gist of the argument is that one shouldn’t compare apples to oranges. There’s nothing wrong with someone enjoying Harry Potter. The problem comes when someone tries to argue that Harry Potter is literature or says that it is “better” than Animal Farm because it sold better.

Hey. To be honest I only started it because people have been super sensitive to the tiniest spoilers. I can’t believe you just used the word “spoilers”. This is supposed to be a non-spoiler forum. FFS!

Based on the limited amount of digging I’ve done through the game files, IIRC, companions and sidekicks share the same nomenclature.

So there no such thing as art?

But everything else is just feels. Some people buy games to be entertained. Some people buy games to own works of art. Art is subjective.

Is your intention to copy and paste this as many times as you can?

Sidekicks have banter

I wonder why Thaos felt the need to actually create gods, though. If belief alone is enough, the fear of an almighty being watching and judging them 24/7. The gods never needed to be real. The point is to be able to convince people of their existence. He wouldn’t have been able to maintain his soul across generations without them.

The Engwithan gods are representations of their cultural values turned up to 11. Iovara has a line at the end of the first game that explains this (paraphrasing her: “anything taken to an extreme becomes grotesque”). Every mythology has a creation myth and an “end of the world” myth. Rymrgand is the latter."Myth" being the key word here. Just because people believe it doesn't make it true. Rymrgand may well believe that his eventual victory is inevitable, but that doesn't make it true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe Yeah, but what does that have to do with Rymrgand? Entropy existed before him, it will exist long after his death (which will predate the heat death of the universe by a long time). Entropy isn't dependent on his existence, he's merely a charlatan who claims that it does. You quoted the answer in your response.

Or download the files and drag them to the directory, as EG mentioned earlier

It’s a question of values and epistemology. I doubt the devs wrote a game around these themes just because they wanted to provide us with some mindless entertainment.

The Engwithan gods are representations of their cultural values turned up to 11. Iovara has a line at the end of the first game that explains this (paraphrasing her: “anything taken to an extreme becomes grotesque”). Every mythology has a creation myth and an “end of the world” myth. Rymrgand is the latter. "Myth" being the key word here. Just because people believe it doesn't make it true. Rymrgand may well believe that his eventual victory is inevitable, but that doesn't make it true. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe