demothios

While I could make a new thread about the excat same thing, I'm choosing to instead simply bump this thread and add a screenshot link: I was in a shipfight, and just as I hit the loot button to end the fight, the game crashed. After the CTD, I looked at the inventories and character screens for the characters to see if anything looked out of the ordinary and lo and behold, Fassina was now a "Spirit" (how would a glitch like that even happen?), even though the description is about Ocean Folk. I don't think the ship battle had anything to do with it, because I loaded every single old autosave and the oldest save I had of my present game and her race is still "Spirit" in all of them, so I probably just didn't pay attention to it before now. Is this known to cause CTD's, or is this an annoying but safe bug in terms of risk of CTD's or frustrating bugs like the ones PoE1 had (think the dreaded gear-destruction bug that can affect companions when they're not in the active party).

Not too fond of the idea of a PoE prequel set during the Saint's War. If there's to be a prequel, I'd much rather have it set in the time leading up to, and about, the creation of the Engwithan gods. A PoE3 could be set immidiately following PoE2, but the mechanics of the game would change, and you no longer control the Watcher of Caed Nua. It could be a RPG/strategy combo. And the only class is cipher. You play an animancer on a desperate/near hopeless/challenging (depending on PoE2 ending) mission to solve the mess Eothas made. Main enemy are crazed followers of Rymrgand, who either are powerful and comfortably enjoy the - supposedly - inevitable final doom of life if the Watcher encouraged Eothas to end the world, OR they are desperate and aggresive and weakened yet dangerous if the PoE2 ending encouraged greater animancy studies. The PC cipher/researcher goes around collecting Engwithan knowledge, other researchers, protecting animancers and their research, and gains funding and directs research at his small workshop... that eventually is extended, enlarged into a proper academy, and gets more prestigious as the game progresses untill it's a major center for animancy research. Instead of game chapters, you fight against a Doomsday Clock. The Rymrgand cults (and others) constantly seek to speed up the time of doom, but your mission is to build a "critical mass" of progress in animancy research and application that can reverse and then stop the clock.

Storywise, PoE1. In Po2, I keep getting this sense that one faction, one sequence of quest progression, one endgame choice is THE right choice, the writer's favorite choice. Otoh, I frigging love naval combat, that companions now have favored/disfavored dispositions, and that the geopolitical scale of conflict of the PoE2 factions vs the local squabbles of Defiance Bay's factions has a greater impact on the story's future.

Not sure I follow your reasoning, excatly, but I guess at the heart of the debate is what consitutes a "god" to begin with. If one likens "god" to a creator god, then, sure, they aren't gods. If, however, you don't think that's a neccesary requirement to be called a god, if a god is "simply" more of an incorporeal, immortal, supremely powerful being that could have been created by something/someone else, then they are gods. No matter if they started out as kith. Thaos' and the Leaden Key's deception isn't that the gods aren't real - the entities known as Berath, Wael, Magran, Eothas, etc. obviously exist - but what the gods are, their origin stories, the history of their creation. So, I would say that the question of the true origin story of the gods, vs. whatever origin stories the believers were told for centuries, is at the heart of the story.

After visiting Arkemyr's mansion following the break-in, if you have Aloth in the group he will mention some magical incident involving the archmages and a destroyed village. This incident is referenced again during Forgotten Sanctum, once by either Llengrath or Tayn (forgot who) and in one of the many notes of those Librarians. IIRC, I believe it was in one of those notes that it's hinted that the girl came from that village the archmages' accidentally destroyed.

The way it's phrased in the game, "there are no gods, but really there are" is a little... clumsy. The gods were made real, the only thing fake about them is the mythical origin stories surrounding them. The gods are essentially the fused souls of an ancient, massive animancy-science experiment. So, the gods are real, but the stories - or mythology - spoken about them is fake. I don't recall if the in-game mythology says that the gods actually created everything- or if it's similar to most indo-european gods where gods aren't omnipotent universe-creators (although they might edit the world abit after emerging into it...).

So, if one chooses to restore Abydon, untempered, you get this ending slide: "Additionally, Abydon's restored interest in preservation led to redoubled efforts to survey Engwithan ruins. Animancers and craftsmen alike found much to study, but tensions with Eir Glanfath rose. (1) As for Stalwart, the Battle of Cayron's Scar only strengthened their resolve to unlock the mysteries of Durgan steel and build new marvels with the White Forge. However, Stalwart's ambitions brought them into further conflict with the Readcerans as more and more impoverished communities gathered at the border and vowed to finish the work of the Iron Flail. (2) It would be many generations before the region saw peace." I get how Abydon's rediscovered curiosity about the past could lead to conflict with the Glanfathans if it leads to sending followers of Abydon to Glanfathan ruins, but how does the second part make sense? Why would "more and more impoverished communities" gather at the border to finish the work of the IF? Abydon's Forge's secrets have been revealed, so Abydonite priests from Raedceras would have little to no reason to start a conflict about it. Does Stalwart simply become extremely succesful, way more than they do in the untempered version, which leads to greedy, little Raedcerans wanting to invade and loot and pillage all that wealth? I suspect, given the dialogue one can have with the Eyeless, that the writers put "progress" as some sort of opposite to history or preservation. That always struck me as weird, this supposed idea that progressivness would/should equal forgetting the past. But even if that's the motivation for coming up with that ending as a result of the untempered Abydon (again, only in regards to Raedceras, not Glanfathan ruins), I don't understand how we are supposed to arrive at that ending. We're talking simply some sort of butterfly effect, an orlan farts in Deadfire, war breaks out at the Dyrwood-Raedceras border again? But I just don't get it. It keeps being the storyline or writing that I felt makes least sense about Pillars 1. Anyway, anyone got any ideas that could explain how not tempering Abydon and letting him be restored, would lead to conflict with Raedceras?

A prequel, set 2000 years prior to the PoE timeline, and you play as an Engwithan some years before the creation of the gods. Given one of the possible outcomes of PoE2, I don't think a PoE3 should happen. (Then again, one of the PoE1 endings had several characters being mentioned living, and dying, far off into the future...).

I've just done my second playthrough in PoE2 and something about the storyline struck me as...unanswered. Or mostly so, anyway. Apart from a comment to a VTC board member during the final VTC questline where you can choose to say that you intend to rebuild Caed Nua, what actually happens to your lands remains an open question. Now it is implied that you "return home" in the ending slides, but what sort of home are you returning to? Does the Watcher still, by Dyrwoodan laws, still legally own the lands attached to Caed Nua? I would really like to see a (small) quest, to answer this question. And, of course, I have an idea to how that could play out. A newly arrived ambassador from the Dyrwood visiting Neketaka wants you to smooth things over with Queen Onekaza, in order to increase trade. During your meeting with the ambassador, you and he/she are confronted by a small group of Dyrwoodan animancers who ask for your patronage - saying you owe them (if you were anti-animancy in Poe1) or that they know you to be a supporter of animancy (if you were pro-animancy, then). They've been working for Vailians, but never felt at home in the Republics, and while they love the Dyrwood, they are all too traumatized by their experiences in Defiance Bay to return to that city. They and the ambassor then set you some tasks, that ultimately lead to either you sellingyour lands to Defiance Bay or allowing the animancers to build a research academy on your lands. In addition, you could choose to either make the rest of Caed Nua into a town, or some sort of class-based stronghold in the same vein as Baldur's Gate 2's strongholds. Or just rebuild it as it was. Of course, this assumes - while there (probably) won't be anymore major expansions to the game - that Obsidian isn't totally done adding content to the game.