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Uburian

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About Uburian

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    DoctorUburian
  1. And now it is time for the Defiants of the Deadfire! To be frank, i didn't recruit Vatnir in this run as i wanted him to turn the floe into a merchant hub. PS: I know that this is technically a POEII image, but i thought that it would be better to publish it here than to create a new tread in the PoEII sub-forum. If a mod thinks otherwise, please notify me and I'll move it
  2. Here comes the whole team of Caed Nua! I mean, i know that Calisca and Heodan don't make it to Caed Nua, but i think they deserve to be alongside the whole team
  3. Next part https://imgur.com/a/RhylGxX --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bricks of Eora: Part I, Act I, Chapter I, Conversations with Calisca When you and Calisca are about to reach what appears to be a group of spring berry bushes, your nose caches the smell of wet hair and rotten flesh. "Wolfs!", the young woman shouts. The wolves attack you with great ferocity, but they are no real match for you. You breathe profoundly, focus your thoughts, and dive into the mind of one of the beasts. It shivers, confused, as his eyesight fails him and his thoughts meld erratically. You don't falter, and with a quick strike of your sword, end the animal life. Meanwhile Calisca finishes the other wolf with his axe, splatting its blood in the ground. You pick up the springberries, and are about to return to the camp, when Calisca stops you with a smirk. "You know, i didn't take you for the fighting type at first. You look more like a scholar to me, but you are definitely not a mage. Are you a cleric, perhaps?", she asks. "The first one is true, at least in part" You turn your head to the sides various times. "But who are you then? I heard Odema calling you Maximilian at one point, but i would like to fully know who I'm working with" "I'm Maximilian Miroslav, and i come from the distant Living lands" "The wild lands of the North! I can't say i known them enough, but is it true that there you can find spiders the size of houses, and that plants can devour entire caravans without leaving a trace?" "Among many other things, yes" "And why would anyone want to live in there?" "To be frank, i don't think that anyone could truly understand the lands unless they experienced them in person" "But for you?" "They used to be my home. I grew up there, in one of the frontier villages" "And what did you do in there, you where an explorer or something?" "In part, but i mostly worked as an alchemist and mechanical engineer. There is always demand of people with my skills up there" "But then, why did you leave the lands?" "One day, while i was in a forest looking for new herbs, an explosion destroyed my house and laboratory. I lost almost everything i had, and with no opportunity of rebuilding my life there i decided to leave the lands and venture to new frontiers. Eventually that path led me to the Dyrwood" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  4. Thanks a lot I'll try to recreate the most significant events from both games, as experienced by my main character. Not all of them will be as complex as the encampment (this one took me 3 days to complete) but i think it will be an interesting project to undertake.
  5. Hello everyone! I'm Uburian, a long time Pillars (and Obsidian) fan and Lego enthusiast from the basque Country. I'm currently working on my doctorate thesis on art and technology, but because of certain global affecting events which I'm sure you are aware off, i have found myself unable to continue my work properly until the situation improves. Now i have plenty of extra time to burn and nowhere to go, so i have decided to start a Pillars of Eternity (I & II) Lego recreation that focuses on my most significant play-trough of the games, and to share it with those who i know will appreciate it I will also utilize this opportunity to hone my storytelling skills. The main tool i will use for this endeavor is the amazing Lego Digital Studio 2, which not only allows you to create digital Lego sets with a very extensive catalogue of pieces, but that can also render said sets in photo-realistic quality. Now, to start the series, i present to you my recreation of the Caravan Encampment set around the ruins of Cilant Lîs: https://imgur.com/a/2ybg5hO ------------------------------------------------------------------- All stories have a beginning, and yours starts around a tranquil bonfire among the imposing ruins of Cilant Lîs. Drops of sweat fall trough your face while you hold your belly in pain, you shiver. The smell of roasted meat, usually a comforting presence, makes you shrink in your knees. "Touch of the rumbling Rot, could be", Odema says. After listening to the caravan master's counsel, you head into the wilderness alongside Calisca in search of spring berries, in hopes that a tea made from them will be enough to help you survive another day. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PS: Good luck to those who are going trough confinement and social distancing right now. Here in the Basque Country (northern Spain) we have been like this for almost a month now. I hope my stories help you go trough this all. Stay safe, and stay strong
  6. PoE and Deadfire are spiritual successors to the Infinity Engine games, and while i understand why it would be appealing to try to continue them in a more mainstream manner, i don't think that they would work that well in any other form than as single-player centric isometric RPGs, preferably with options to play them either in Rtwp or with a turn based system. If you drop that, the game would loose too much of its charm. A counterpoint would be what Bethesda did with Fallout 3 (adapting an isometric franchise to be a first person RPG), and while it is undoubtable that they were successful in creating an interesting game that sold well, it is arguable that it was a good Fallout game (one of the reasons for why New Vegas is generally considered better than 3). Then they made Fallout 4, which was enjoyable but lost even more of the original game's charm, and in the end they made Fallout 76, which i think doesn't even deserve to be remembered at all. What i'm trying to say with this is that, while i do agree that Pillars will need to evolve to adapt to the new times, i don't think that a full change of game style would work, at least not until a proper conclusion is delivered to the story treads that are already opened. The franchise would simply lose too much of itself in such a change, and for that, i would rather see a completely new IP created instead.
  7. Well, now i really want to play a game set in Eora in which you create and maintain a shop of animancy powered bikes A tactical game set in Eora (similar to Xcom, but with RtWP apart from TB) would also be amazing. Thanks a lot for the links.
  8. As an artist and story maker i fully empathize with Josh's (and the entire PoE development team's) sentiment. It is really hard to create something that has true soul (not metaphysically speaking), but even if you succeed at that you have no guarantee that your creation will be liked by others. Besides, it is really easy to become blind to the flaws of your creations, especially if you are a passionate person, and the lack of, or misguided/badly interpreted, criticism only increases that problem. Pillars of Eternity was released when the demand for isometric RPGs was really high, a demand mostly driven by nostalgia. Obsidian managed to create a very worthy, gameplay solid, and thematically unique spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games, yet it was not free of flaws (its slow start and somewhat loosely tied up main plot, among others). However, the market at the time embraced the game with passion, and only after the initial craze was over did the its flaws start to become evident (only a small fraction of those who bought the game finished it). The sales however had spoken for themselves, and while the more glaring gameplay issues the game had were fixed in due time, its narrative stile perdured and was inherited by Deadfire. Deadfire inherited both the strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor, yet the market had changed substantially since the original release, and the public, now satiated and accustomed to the more accessible, thematically more mundane, and multiplayer friendly Divinity series, simply didn't care about PoE anymore. The utilization of Fig instead of Kickstarter, and the abysmal advertisement campaign (or lack thereof) Deadfire got didn't help either. Result? The game was launched, and even if it was in many ways a better game than PoE, it passed without grief or glory (well, more grief than Glory). It was, for the most part, ignored by the market. Could Obsidian have done better? I think they could, yes, had they not been as blinded by PoE's original success. For reference, i completed PoE through the course of a year and a half (i like to enjoy story-heavy games in slow burns), and i still have to complete my first Deadfire playthrough (i'm getting close to the end). Once i finish it, i'll probably publish an in-deep analysis of it, alongside an opinion on what could have been done better, and how a PoE3 could be crafted. Why? Because i hate when a story with soul remains unfinished, or poorly finished.
  9. I'm currently playing trough FS, and the unavoidable eventually of having to fight a crazed archmage empowered Oracle seems daunting. So far i have been able to beat the Sanctum's bosses handly in upscalled veteran with a full party, (even if they took some atempts each, more suprisingly NovNok), but if anything, the first Oracle fight was annoying (the laser spam specailly) and i don't really know if i'm going to be able to defeat a more poweful version of it without losing my nerves. I'm preparing for it as much as i can (stocking up on scrolls of Witting wind, high level potions, and figurines). Time will tell if i succeed. Edit: Battle Report I managed to defeat the Oracle in my 3rd attempt, much to my surprise in what essentially was supposed to be a test run at the fight. I retreated to a corner of the map and spawned every figurine and summonable i had, wich alongside Eder took care of most of the minions and tanked the Oracle's laser beams. The scrolls of Witting wind and great maelstrom were the MVPs, casted almost non-stop by Aloth, Xoti (bettween heals) and Fassina they progresively drained the health of the Oracle and the minions, while my Cipher ran around shotting the minions and buffing the party. When the last minion droped, the Oracle was nearly dead and my pary was mostly intact. Aloth petrified it (in a very humorous pose) and the party blasted it with everything they could. Hopefully this recap will help those that want to beat the Oracle
  10. The very first game i remember playing (more or less, as i was 5-6 at the time) was a version of Prince of Persia recorded on magnetic cassette tapes, and you had to rewind the tape each time if you died. The damn thing got stuck more times that i would like to remember. Things got a little better after that, for a while at least. In any case, having utilized mostly Macintosh computers until late 2011, I'm used to waiting for the games I want to play.
  11. Well, in my case, and for as much as i would like to play the game, i'm out of luck. Purchasing a physical copy not being an option, my first choice would be to buy the game in GoG, but alas, we don't even know if ToW will be released in GoG at all. Steam would be my choice after GoG (i prefer to avoid Steam if i can, but it has its uses). The Microsoft store presents an interesting conundrum, as if i could i would probably purchase the game there, but my current computer (which is used by more persons than me) utilizes an archaic barebones versions of Windows 10 which doesn't support their app store, and i won't be able to switch the version any time soon. The Epic store is not an option either. I won't get into the Steam vs Epic debate that much (apart from saying that i see it as a black vs grey morality situation), but, as a gamer and creator, i find their practices despicable (as well as very detrimental to the industry as a whole) and i will never utilize their store. So now, my only real option is to wait a whole year for the game to come out to what (for me at least) is a sub-optimal platform. Thank you Private Division! Damn do i miss the times in which we would simply buy a game in a store, install it, and play it.
  12. A reasonable approach, if ultimately futile in this case. The unfortunate truth is that, in this particular case, voting with our wallets can only provide, at best, some stoic comfort. In one hand Obsidian (trough, Private Division) will receive guaranteed money from Epic if the sales don't reach certain levels anyway, and in the other, all future obsidian titles will be conceived under Microsofts stewardship. If anything, low sales will just incentive publishers to take similar deals from Epic in the future. Business are business, and we should not expect Obsidian to prioritize our interests over their economic ones, in a similar way that a creator can not be held accountable for the emotional impact their creations might have on others (within reason, of course). However, we humans are both beings of reason and emotion, and getting unattached from things that we have created a strong emotional connection with is not an easy or painless process (in this case, getting in terms with the fact that one of our most beloved game developer studios will probably never be the same it was), and should not be treated as a non factor either. In any case, what can we really do about it then, apart from accepting this new status quo? Very little. Buying the game or not will have no impact in the future of Obsidian Private Division or Epic, so our choice should be determined by whether we are willing to deal with the insufferable platform that is the Epic Store (or the windows store) or not. In my case, i'll gladly wait until the game comes to GoG, if it ever does.
  13. Ironic. A company that made a comeback from the brink of bankruptcy thanks to crowdfunding a video game centered around the topic of defying the will and power of synthetic gods (at least to an extent) will now benefit, even if indirectly, another company which is helping create something that can easily be described as a synthetic god. I guess that this was mostly private division's doing? A pity, as i was really looking forward to playing The Outer Worlds, but ideologically i simply can't support the game anymore, even if it is also available on the Microsoft Store. Besides, i prefer my games DRM free, and none of those storefronts provide me with that option.
  14. From PoE2's story i got the impression that the degradation was caused by the gods syphoning small chunks of essence from reincarnating souls (thus fracturing the souls) instead of being a natural occurrence, or perhaps it was already a part of the natural reincarnation cycle and the creation of the Wheel worsened it. In any case, we will probably not now for sure until PoE3 is released.
  15. I'm guessing that DoS2's cooperative mode has played a key part on it's commercial success, but personally i don't think that PoE (the core franchise at least) should have such a mode, as it would likely compromise it's nature. DoS2 is also (from my point of view) way more mainstream than PoE2 (specially regarding the setting and the themes it explores), thus way more appealing to the general public (Pillars has a complex acquired taste, which i adore, but it is probably not as appealing as Divinity to someone new to the genre). Pillars gameplay (being a direct successor tot the IE games) is also way less accessible to someone new than the more modern (gameplay wise) DoS2. In sort, DoS2 has sold more than PoE2 because it is way more mainstream, and also because it grew (gameplay wise) beyond the direct legacy of the IE games. Personally, i don't really like DoS2 that much (i'll probably give it another chance eventually), and it would sadden me deeply to see the PoE franchise abandoned, or what is worse, made mainstream to meet sale goals. I know what world we live in though, and at least i'm graceful that we got PoE1 and 2. I'm also someone who hates leaving things half done, so i really hope that they give a proper conclusion to the story of Eora. Final disclaimer: This is just my opinion.
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