Starwars

I don't consider it a plot hole at all myself. I mean, lots of people will jump at the "yeah, it's just a poor excuse that there's no clear answer on it, clearly the devs are lazy or didn't think things through". But who on earth would trust the gods after these two games and what happens in them? They really *are* children with far too much power, that much seems to be clear. That we never learn the definitive answer to what happened exactly before the Wheel is just an interesting question to me and one that does not need to be answered in the game. Perhaps it will come in PoE3, but then I certainly hope they will raise more unanswered questions.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, Neketaka is one of the best things about Deadfire, maybe the best. And noone is forcing anyone to comb through all the content in one sitting, that's the beauty of it. Explore the city some, maybe leave for a while and do something outside the city, and return.

If you go through all of Neketaka at once you're gonna spend a lot of time talking. If you get bored of that then sail out for a while, a lot of the combat can be found while exploring the seas.

Well her good ending seems to be her complaining about Rauatai's unethical methods used in Deadfire and leader of Rauatai listening to those complaints. She is kinda weird in that she is willing to do horrible things for her country even if she doesn't like it She is a soldier loyal to her nation to a fault, so I suppose that attitude comes with the job, can't really fault her for that. Come to think of it, funny how Kana presented Rautai in the first POE, it felt almost magical, and when you get to Deadfire all you see is overbearing conqueror with heavy guns and national anthems destroying the natural beauty of Huana islands. Huana caste system is terrible and doesn't work well on a large scale, but I kinda like how the islands live in harmony with nature. I was thinking about this too, it's a pretty neat thing I think. Like, in PoE1 I always felt that the view of Rauatai felt sorta... fragmented, because you have Kana talking about it. Kana is just extremely likeable and sorta easy-going, but keeps mentioning how Rauatai likes their cannons and all that. But it's obviously home to him and he adores it in some way. And then you see the "other side" of it in Deadfire. I thought that was really cool. Suddenly, Kana's struggle felt a great deal more real in retrospect.

I think they were gonna fix the disposition mechanics first (they change way too fast) and apparently that system also ties in somehow to companion relationships. But then he mentioned that they were also gonna go through individual conversations to adjust them so that they react... well, not crazily. But those tweaks would come later.

Josh has said that he is creatively burnt out, which I can certainly imagine after PoE+White March+Deadfire. Brandon Adler, who was producer on Pillars 1, will be leading the DLCs.

I must say, it's extremely weird to me look at characters and say that there should be a reason for them *not* being romanceable.

It's more light-hearted than PoE1 but it's not... silly or anything. It's still easy enough to take seriously, but there is a bit more humor in it. I think they hit a nice balance. Aside from that, in terms of visuals and audio, the atmosphere is absolutely top notch. Neketaka is a work of art in my opinion, finally a large cRPG city worth a damn.

Guessing it's part of the good ol' "streamlining" move to make everything a bit more casual but then... they didn't go all the way or something? I always restricted the stash in PoE1 as I like to do some inventory management (not that it's particularly difficult with no weight mechanics or inventory tetris). But yeah, it doesn't make much sense in the way it's implemented in Deadfire unless they're gonna add the "Restrict stash" button later.

Someone brought up New Vegas and how it was praised only when compared to Fallout 3 or somesuch and that's not true at all for me. I prefer it to Fallout 2 myself (and vastly prefer it to 3 and 4 of course), though the first game is still my favorite in the series. And add me to the crowd who appreciates those kinds of RPGs. That is not about leading the player through a bunch of plot points but which throw you into a world, and gives you freedom to interact with the world and its factions/locations. I'd much rather play Fallout, New Vegas, Deadfire or a more obscure game such as Age of Decadence, then I would a game of the "Bioware school of game" so to speak (rough generalizations here). The plot may not be heavy, but the stories these games tell through the gameworld and the player's impact on them is far more enjoyable to me than "omg, the main character is Revan!!!11" When it comes to something like BG2, the reason I liked that game (and it is a big reason) had a lot to do with Athkatla, and the way both games managed to sell the "adventure in a dangerous world" vibe. It had *nothing* to do with the story for me, and characters like Imoen had... the opposite reaction from me than what the game wanted to push. Not to say that the Eothas plotline couldn've have been better of course, as far as that goes I think PoE1 was much better, but I will *gladly* take the freedom of Deadfire any day of the week.

I'm not sure if this is intended or not but during the Ending slides, the music that was played for me was the... hm, the same music that plays in the adra lighthouse area, a sort of "tense" piece of music. It felt rather odd to have that going during the ending slides, especially when thinking back on the PoE1 ending slides which had a wonderful note of bittersweet finality to them. If not a bug, then I would at least make a suggestion to change the music to something a bit more fitting.

I liked Edér a lot in PoE2. I will say that I was also disappointed in his quest which just... felt like a weird continuation of his character, and in the Deadfire especially. But all in all, I felt Edér's sorta point to shine was in Pillars 1, and I kinda like that. In that, he faced a lot of his personal demons and I'm a glad in a way that they at least chose not do something EVEN BIGGER for his quest in Deadfire, just because. His story with his brother and his struggles with his god felt like the point of Edér to me, and that's mostly done in PoE1. Though I do really like his ongoing disappointment in Eothas in Deadfire, and his comment near the end about the gods just being children really made his story throughout these two games worth it. As far as banter and regular dialogues go, he still felt like regular old Edér to me.

I think what the Wizards mostly have lost is that special sense of saving up spells due to per-rest mechanics and then just unleashing hell in that one particularly tough combat encounter. Some of that flavour is just lost now that you can unleash everything you got in each combat encounter. They are definitely not weak at all. And in fact, with some of the higher level spells, you can absolutely cheese a lot of the higher level encounters with a wizard. Which... would not have been a sane option if it had been per-rest system since you would have to go back to town constantly if you did it that way (on higher difficulty levels with limited camping supplies at least). But alas... guess that's me whining about the per-encounter vs per-rest stuff again. But yeah, I'm finding Wizard to be one of the stronger classes actually.

I only got Concelhaut but I thought that was kinda the joke. You get an ability but the tradeoff is that you have to suffer his comments, haha.

Personally, I'm all for critical paths being short. Especially if one is able to "shortcut" parts of it, like the Fallouts for example. That's not saying that I find Deadfire's story particularly great but it doesn't have to do with its shortness. I'd much rather have a game like Deadfire, where the meat of it is how you interact with the factions and Deadfire has that stuff in spades. Just the freedom of it, both in terms of travel as well as how you interact with the powers in the world. Story has certainly never been the most important part of a RPG for me, far from it (though I can appreciate a good story certainly, Planecape: Torment is one of my favorite games). The "Bioware model" is most often quite tedious for me, and the "JRPG model" even more so.

I'm not a huge stealth player but I would agree that it's one of the best, if not the best, stealth system in the "old-school" type of RPG. And I'm always glad to see the devs pushing for different styles of gameplay, even in a franchise such as PoE which has a focus on combat. Same with the faction stuff, it's just great to see that in Deadfire I think.

I kinda like the ship-combat but it feels very... barebones in a way and not extremely satisfying. It feels like a solid foundation but there's not much depth to be had in it I think. Like someone said, if there were more movement, if there were a wind mechanic, if enemies could choose to surrender, or if there like special events that could happen where you make use of your companions or crew (don't mind the events where the hull is leaking or whatever)... then it'd feel a bit more dynamic. It feels a bit stale to me which is a shame. I hope the entire seafaring system gets some love in patches. I love the idea of it and, like I said, it's a nice foundation. But I hope they will maybe introduce more special events while out on the high seas, maybe toughen up the resource management aspect (or have an option to have like "Hardcore" sailing difficult or something). It feels like it could be a great thing on its own but right now it is too easy to manage it so it becomes sort of pointless aside from the "feel" of it all. I mean, ever since I got my ship my crew morale went up very quickly and for the whole game, it's been sitting at 80+ easily. So yeah, I hope there will be improvements and additions to it in the future. EDIT: Something they succeeded with, at least in terms of how I play the game, is the pacing of how often I get into ship combat though. For me, it's never happened enough that I just get tired of it, it always feels kinda fresh when I get into it which is nice. Though I don't really go on a bounty spree, I could see it becoming old fast if you do a whole slew of ship bounties after one another.

I love the shanties as well as the tavern music pieces in this game. I liked the tavern music in PoE1 as well but this is on another level. Great stuff and feels like it's "performed", it's not perfectly played. Love that. One thing that would be cool for the shanties would be if there were some impromptu instruments joining in at some point or another, like a solo violin or something. Would be fun. But yes, great work on these things Justin. It's stuff like this that makes the game come alive.

I want arseholes as well. About the sidekicks, for those of you who have played the game with them, how much is there to them? Can you talk to them? Do they have interjections in dialogues like the other characters do?

I like the new characters. Overall, I'm very impressed with how much they interject in conversations, and the relationship system is a great little thing that I hope to God will be improved and see more use in upcoming games. Furthermore, I'm glad that companions aren't without "teeth" so to speak, I made a choice and was forced to kill Maia for example. I love stuff like that, that they just don't do along with whatever stuff you do. More of that please! From what I've seen, I think Xoti is my least favorite. Not because of her character in itself (I find the young, naive but fanatically pious priestess angle interesting) but because her arc unfolded in a weird way in my game. It just... got going really fast and just moved along really fast as well. Kinda like the Devil in PoE1 (well, not as abruptly as that). Just felt her character could've used more time to "breathe" throughout the entire game. Tekehu is probably my favorite of the new ones. Pampered and initially annoying, he feels like he's going on a journey in the game. Also naive but willing to take it all in. He's cool. I'm loving the old guard. Edér is always great. I think his main arc was still in PoE, but he's a great presence in this game as well and it's great to see where the events of the Deadfire take him. As for Aloth and Pallegina, I love that they're the "grumpy" ones. I mean, they're not very pleasant, quite bitter and are a great counterpoint to the new and naive companions (well, Tekehu and Xoti). I do think the game is in need of a companion that is more of a foil, like Durance for example. I mean, Chaotic Evil is often one-sided but... just more morally twisted characters is nice to have along and shakes the party up a bit. Even Serafen, who is a salty old pirate, is a pirate more in the cutesy way.

Something I also kinda hope for down the line is either flat out making the ship management tougher, or having a sort of "hardcore ship experience" option to toggle. I love the idea of buying supplies and all of that but it's been a complete non-issue in my game. Not sure how to do it in a "believable" way though. Maybe reduce the number of ship supplies you get from those little "loot bags" on the world map or something. I'll agree with one of the above posts that given Deadfire's overall design philosophy, having a really good difficulty experience would be fantastic for replayability. I want to feel the struggle!

No idea if she is recruitable but after meeting her, she is kinda the best character in the game.

I miss the old system, which I expected to do. Both in terms of per-rest resources as well as the health/endurance system. I really dislike the feel that you can be near KO on every character, have depleted all their resources and... if you win, bang. Everything is back to what it was again. Not saying that that stuff was hard to manage in PoE1 but it brought a different feel to how the game felt, and I liked that.

There's also the fact that Deadfire is quite open and I'm guessing you would run into real trouble if you went off the beaten path early in the game, but I think most people will just turn away if they see one of those 3 skulls encounters (same if you see them in the journal). It's a lot easier to "plan" your playthrough in Deadfire since the game tells you "hey, this is beyond your level". Though you can turn those skull things off. Nevertheless, I definitely agree. Stuff like the crit path as well as the areas sorta surrounding Neketaka (and some encounters in Neketaka) could really stand to be buffed up. I've had one party wipe on Hard in 28 hours of playtime and that was me just screwing around and doing something really stupid. And I'd be the first to admit that while I'm not bad at these games, I'm really not a great player. I mean, I think I've used Empower like... three times in all that playtime, and two of those were in the same encounter. But yeah, I miss something like the Eothas temple in Gilded Vale, or going into Caed Nua the first time where you really had to be quite careful. And those weren't areas "out of the way" at all (in fact, Caed Nua is on the crit path).

I haven't really played around with builds at all but I'm enjoying playing my Seer (Ghostheart/Cipher) a lot. It feels strong at least, but can't say how it compares to other builds.