Zaris

It is, however calling it „dissapointing” wouldn’t even begin to describe what happens. Waidwen steps out, asks Eothas what is he doing, gets a sh*t answer, then shrugs and goes away without trying to stop him. So yeah, f*ck this guy, as well as all other assh*oles trapped in White Void: oblivion is the only answer for them. Even better: ignoring them and going straight for the dragon.

I also have a related question; is there any way to side with fampyrs but also not look like a total b*tch? Because the only option I got was very cowardly and simply didn’t fit my evil character (or the fact that you know, I just slaughtered my way to their leader without so much as breaking sweat). Is there any option to force them into obedience? Seems pretty cool to have an undead army as your servants. Especially if that allowed you to hire undead crew. Actually that’s weird, if Obsidian didn’t allow us for something like that because it seems like exactly the thing they would do.

The dark tone of the first was one of the best parts, because it was something you were up against. Pillars 1 Eder is also one of the best voices to bounce perspectives off of in an RPG. Two of the best parts of the first diluted... I actually have to defend Deadfire’s Eder here, because I really liked his dialogues with Eothas and conversations about gods in general. You could really feel this anger of a regular person who realised the truth behind Eora’s powers. Very French Revolution, Occupy etc. vibe to it and I think it’s important perspective to imagine how most folk will react once they see that the emperor is naked. Everything, from his very first dialogue about Berath’s mission, via his personal quest and to ending slides is very coherent, very believable and well done. It shows how a simple farmer/soldier can reevaluate his beliefs and it made me kinda proud to help lead him this way (you know, Scholar/Sage/Rational disposition). I don’t know how is he on the „believer” path but I couldn’t yet bring myself to play as a godly person; for now it’s just various iterations of atheists for me.

-definite upside is number of unique dialogues. In PoE they never came up for both my playthroughs, but here you can „click” just the perfect roleplay build and have amazing feeling, unique for this character. Island aumaua from Deadfire, anybody from Rautai and Fire/Death Godlike are in for a huge treat, even with extra dialogue trees in languages other than English (or you know: Aedyran). You can also understand each side of conflict better thanks to that, despising Rautai as usurpers with one character and aiding them in unifing the savage land with another character. However it’s still not as good as factions in New Vegas and Tyranny, where you had to commit to one side; here you can basically f*ck around with all sides right until the last mission -number of builds you can create is also amazing, with multiclassing and interesting subclasses. The problem with that is you’ll find yourself with dozens ideas for Watcher, but each playthrough will force you along the same, boring route through Port Maje and Digsite, rather than changing something from the very beginning. I was hoping this first island will act as a minature of Archipelago and give us the taste of all factions, so that we can get to know them, and later choose one to aid us in repairing Defiant. Instead we have the same sh*t no matter what. -Combat is nice, with much better AI than PoE, no more running around in circles or waiting idly by while the party is getting slaughtered. -Main story is weird, short and uneven. You really need to think hard in order to find any excuse to not finish the game in 2h since that’s what any sensible person would do in our Watcher’s shoes; literal god stomping around seems pretty serious.

How? ME3 is exactly the opposite: lone hero saving enitre Galaxy, with his small crew and no allies. They SHOULD end it in a bad way as described above, make Reapers truly Lovecraftian (I know this adjective is overused on the Internet, but here it fits perfectly) and show that there are dangers against which there are no victories. OR that there could be a victory but everybody should unite way sooner.

I agree with Verde that it’d be much better if extra budget from voiceover was used for hiring more writers. It really doesn’t improve the experience to have some random NPC do a horrible accent; amazingly written lines do. I still consider Tyranny far superior to any other isometric RPG and it has few voiced dialogues. As for Eora being f*cked I guess it is. But it may be a cool thing: in all fiction of the world, since mythologies to modern games, we have a hero rescue the world in the last second; even cliche-breaking GoT crawled into nice, familiar good/evil conflict. So PoE 3 finishing with an end of the world despite our heroic efforts would be a nice refreshment. This gut-punch would be even better if Watcher becomes really powerful in the last part, almost like a god, and failes nevertheless. A moral along the lines „if everybody did just a little it would save us, but all of the world just waited for a hero and a group of specialists (animancers in that case) to save their lazy as*es” is infinitely better than „hey, one guy/gal can just take all the sh*t on themselves, so you can jut relax and go back to peeling turnips”.

Yeah, it’s possible to kill just him and spare Kaali, albeit it’s not an easy task. It’s a bit easier if you have Intimidate 18 since then you can scare Kaali and make him run away. Although in my playthtorugh he stopped just in front of the entrance and suddenly joined the fight after all; don’t know whether that’s a bug or if he’s supposed to behave like that. Either way that made him far enough from Nemnok that I could use AoE.

asnjas you seem to be very frustrated by the fact that you’re one of the few people that actually would have to spend any time thinking about puzzles in computer games and instead googles the solutions. Also time and time again people like xzar_monty, aargonhowell and myself wrote here that it’s not about puzzles themselves but the overall difficulty and amount of hand-holding, which you seem to be oblivious to. People playing this kind of games don’t want grinding, so your point about collecting thousands of items for quests is moot; it’s just easy so lazy devs (or MMO devs) do it. But it’s not a feature you’d put in any promotional material, wouldn’t you? And if Obsidian listened to the whims of stupidest gamers they’d switch to making shooters or other skinner boxes; the fact that they keep to such a hard teritory as isometric RPGs suggests that they want to deliver a quality content for demanding audience with a bit better taste than an average moron with parent’s credit card and a Steam account. That’s why it’s a shame to see them dumb down and not give us more freedom in solving the problems in game (problems, not only puzzles: that includes quests, dialogues etc.). Hope the topic is a bit more clear now.

xzar_monty I didn’t play Ultima, I barely know that name by some mentions in Zero Punctuation. That puzzle in BG2 is truly great, but that’s still more exemption rather than rule. And it’s not like people were massively looking for answers via Internet/magazines, like this guy above said, but rather either did this on their own or accepted that they’ll not solve it. It wasn’t a problem that devs adressed by dumbing the games down, but rather a great feature that was stripped down. And also puzzles are only one aspect of our issue, right? We’re talking also about general approach to giving clues, quest marks and other aides. Verde, kill or not kill is not a major choice: it’s a joke. Especially that it doesn’t change a thing: you get the same ending and items either way. You just miss out on a good fight that way. And the ”puzzles” in this DLC are (as I said) just buming around each area until you find all pieces of lore. The only reason people need help with it is because many people are idiots. You’d need to be seriously inebriated to have any sort of problem with it. Getting lost in Bridge Ablaze because of poor area design does not count as „puzzle”. Simple fire puzzle in Engwithan Digsite is more „stimulating” than that because you actually need to read the plate above and connect it to the shields in the other room. And yeah: BoW has nice storytelling. But it would be insulting if a 2-3h story with no branching had anything less. Try giving this quality to a plot with at least two viable routes, than we can talk about really good story.

„We are” And not really: video game puzzles always have been insultingly easy so the only people searching for answers were children. And just because some of your audience spoil the fun for themselves doesn’t mean you need to get rid of the fun altogether. Should writers don’t include any mystery in their books because some idiots just jump to the last page before actually reading all of the story?

BoW is very well in this regard? Where? : D It’s hand-holding from start to finish, no agency, no branching, just short linear story. Good story and well written, but it’s always easy to write when you don’t have to account for players’ decisions. There is no smart thing to do with all 3 spirits, no puzzle to solve: just bum around their area collecting bits of lore and off you go. Not to mention that dialogues with Rymrgrand seem very odd, like his lines were written by different people on different days. One of my characters was huge fan of him and always did the most Rymrgrand thing to do and there is no option to express that; simple „whoo, Big R, awesome to see you man! What needs destruction today?” would suffice. Characters that side with life also don’t have much to say: beside stupid taunting of a literal god you can’t say nothing. Why can’t a pro-animancy Watcher investige (or at least express the will to investigate) the device that allowed to defy the god of death and reach a state of nigh immortality? Or say as a goodbye something along the lines „You know, kith will end you one day. By the power of our minds, our science and our magic even death will die” instead if childish „Why are you such a jerk?” You know why he is a jerk: he’s been a **** for centuries!

Unfortunately there will always be some restrictions to our freedom in isometric RPGs, since the mechanics themselves prohibit some actions (you can’t say, bar the doors to Deadlight and set it ablaze, or jump overboard and swim to the hidden dock right away) and the devs need to think in advance of every move the player can make. However you’re right that they could be a little bit less obvious with the choices they give, since there is great enjoyment in finishing a quest in a way that’s your own. For example look how excited people get over their strategies in Xcom (I know, completely different game but I’m talking about psychological effect it has on players) and even something as simple as blowing the cover with one character to snipe the targets behind it with another feels very rewarding; and it feels rewarding because it feels like something of your own, something outside the box. That’s why it’d be nice to see at least two „hidden” ways of dealing with the quests, apart from the obvious ones. Especially that Obsidian already did this: one instance that comes to mind is when in New Vegas you must deal with some gun traders. They take your guns at the entrance at the door but you can just buy new ones inside and immediately use them to cause carnage. Or better yet, steal grenades from the shelves and start throwing them all over the place. Simple, but because nobody told you to do it, you feel much better, like you broke the system somehow.

Death godlikes are children of Berath so not exactly bound to be evil. Just very prone to it because of being ugly motherf*ckers. As for Bleak Walkers I noticed that it’s quite common to consider them as a sort of bunch of psychos, comparable to Warhammer’s Chaos Warriors. For me they aren’t mere brutes but rather people who embrace the true nature of war and conflict, instead of hiding behind honor, loyality or other illusions other warriors use to justify their actions. After all everybody involved in conflict will kill and injure other people, often innocent civilians. And it’s not up to soldiers to be merciful because if there was an option for peace it passed long before they got involved. So if you’re going to be doing horrible things anyway, you might as well go just a little bit further and use that to your advantage. It was never stated if they chose their modus operandi from sheer lust for violence or rather after a logical calculation done by their founder/s. And, unsuprisingly, their attitude leads to lesser violence since many opponents straight up surrunder when they hear who’s coming for them. They use strategy that actually saves the most people, instead of focusing on pretentious moral grandstanding. I prefer that than Maia and Pellagina who pretend to be good while they execute innocents and pretend it’s a suprise for them. But of course that’s only my take.

Relationships in this game are not super horrible, but as with all other Deadfire’s relations, they are just too shallow, as KaineParker said. It’d better if Obsidian focued on making 4 awesome companions with really rich dialogues and unique personalities, that actually allow you to connect rather than making a lot of meaningless companions and sidekicks. Even if these party members didn’t match every player, a rich hateful relation is better than bland one (at least in fiction). Right now they’re seriously even worse than BioWare in this aspect and on level of Fallout...4. More Verses and Sirins please, less Aloths and Palleginas. Edit: but to actually answer your question all relationships are playful (except Aloth’s who sucks anyway) and require you to be lighthearted, max relation with this character and then do their sidequest. They don’t revolve around anything in particular. Xoti and Maia give you some nice banter when you are in relationship with them, get jealous and/or protective in some interactions with NPCs, not too bad. What I dislike is the fact that you can’t have a negative relationship, when you dislike each other but still feel attracted. You need to max positive rep first and doing it basically requires you to be lighthearted (Clever, Shady and Passionate dialogue options)

Yeah, the bone chair seems a bit much, unless it’s made from some Furrante’s friends: in that case it’s perfect. As for Ukaizo I’d say that leaving it with the storms is one of the best endings for me; it’s a huge middle finger for Rauatai and their schemes and it keeps Deadfire wild and unpredictable, the way its should be. Very Galawain if you ask me. Not the choice I’d make as myself but that’s the point of RPGs, to get into somebody else’s shoes.