Night Stalker

Sawyer posted a link to his slides if you want a closer look.

I have my doubts that we will be able to send our idle companions on quests in PoE2. In PoE1 they were parked at the stronghold, which was fixed geographically and therefore easy to find. In PoE2 we won't have a stronghold, we will have a boat to move around the archipelago (and which the PC always will be relatively near to), making it harder to justify the randomly picked stronghold adventures we got in the first game (How did the quest giver know we would be here? Is the place our companion has to go to even on the same landmass?). Secondly, I don't like the idea of these adventures showing us a cutscene. I wouldn't mind some scripted interactions that much, but for me the stronghold adventures were something that the companions explicitly did away from the story the PC experienced, and somehow involving us in their solo adventure seems wrong (reading the summary of what transpired was fine, since they themselves could have told us). It also seems to be a lot of resources to use on something that was done to flesh out the initially half-baked stronghold. That being said, take heart in the fact that we will get some scripted interactions while sailing the seas, some of the leading to in-engine combat, some of them being purely choice based.

PC developers also have a lot to lose by getting on console if started out branding their game PC centric (explicitly or implicitly). The PC audience has already bought into the title, and if they feel that the developer has begun to cater to the console market and their sensibilities, a backlash becomes likely. I don't see this happening with PoE however, not as long as Josh Sawyer is as heavily involved as he currently is: Source: Josh Sawyer, The Something Awful forums. As for full voice acting, I think that the keep in PoE1 proved that if you do something, you should do it well or not at all. To this day, the keep is still being brought up as a strike against the game. I feel that you should either hire professionals to do voice work, or don't voice that bit. I have yet to find a case where speech synthesis has been done truly well, and I would be against using a cheap third-rate narrator for the bulk of the text, even if it was an option you had to toggle on.

It was Paradox Arctic who did the port.

Yes, and it's only hidden in the sense that the game won't display it when you go into the load save menu.

I think there were a decent amount of voice acting in PoE 1, but I would have liked to see it applied differently, either voicing an entire dialog chain, or none of it at all.

The console version of PoE changed a bunch of UI elements to work with their control scheme. We don’t plan to bring over any of the console version’s UIs or controller functionality. For the PC versions of PoE, we have Steam controller support. Source: Josh Sawyer, Frog Helms Fan Club (his Q&A tumblr)

I wouldn't hold my breath: Source: Josh Sawyer, The Something Awful forums. The console version of PoE changed a bunch of UI elements to work with their control scheme. We don’t plan to bring over any of the console version’s UIs or controller functionality. For the PC versions of PoE, we have Steam controller support. Source: Josh Sawyer, Frog Helms Fan Club (his Q&A tumblr) Personally I don't care for playing such games using a controller, but for Deadfire I would leave the decision up to Obsidian (after they have delivered on their promise on a PC targeted game).

I think Sawyer has said that they were trying to avoid the [description][voice over][description][voice over] pattern and its relatives.

Paradox streamed an hour of them playing the console version of the game, so now we can make up our own minds. IMO it seems like Paradox Arctic did their best, but it's clear that this is not a game designed for a controller.

Josh gets very excited about 2d shadows: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/900537408348864512

Unlikely. The Fig crowdfunding campaign is long behind us, and new pledges do no longer count towards the streachgoals. If they have locked down the scope from Fig funds, why should money from other sources expand the scope? As an aside, an ever-expanding scope, even if predicated on more resources, is a good way of making your product go over time, go over budget, and become a mess. The money may however go toward post launch support and DLC/expansions. All of these speculations are of course based on the idea that the console ports will be profitable and Obsidian will get a decent cut.

I think the best solution would be to rework the Obsidian.net website so it has the usual social media feeds (and links to the ones that cannot be embedded in the website), as well as an up-to-date list of the newest Obsidian YouTube releases and upcomming streams (preferably in some calendar format e.g. May 12, 2018: Obsidian Plays Don't Starve! May 19, 2018: Obsidian Plays Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus).

Given the presence of Berath’s Blessing (and many players desire to endlessly experiment with builds), will the introduction of PoE 2 be shorter than PoE 1 (Encampment + Cilant Lis)? Perhaps one of the possible blessings of Berath will be to skip the introduction segment of the game?

Engwithan society was comprised of all the kith races. The mural you find in Cilant Lis at the start of the game hints at this.

Sawyer has mentioned this several times as a deficiency of PoE and has said they will improve it in the sequel.

If you are talking about the PC version getting controller support besides the Steam Controller, I am afraid that is not the plan.

I am afraid this is unlikely to happen.

Hair chat.

If you are talking about the PC version getting the console UI as an option with support for the console controllers, I am afraid that is not the plan.

IGN has released a 13 minute gameplay video of the very start of the (just after character creation).

One of the reasons they gave was that only a small amount of players ever finish games such as PoE. Therefore they felt it made sense to set the expansion during the early/middle part of the game, so more people would experience it (undoubtedly they applies the same logic to the economic side of the equation).

When you make the final choice in the game it makes a final, hidden, save file - like all save files this includes all the recorded decisions. Sawyer held a dev stream while the Deadfire was crowdfunding where he clarified it - here is a link to relevant part of the Twitch stream.

I have been pleasantly surprised on how long Obsidian has supported PoE. I guess it becomes easier to justify when its their own franchise and that some of the changes may go into PoE2.

The devs have said that they are aware of the issue and are going to design around it for PoE 2. It is however not going to be fixed for PoE 1.