bugarup

I, too, have an interpretation similar to Tick's. Not much of a Trekkie, but Cpt Picard seemed to simply have charisma. And charismatic people can influence (not the same as manipulate) other people easily because those other people look at high CHA person and think "Wow, they so nice I wouldn't mind doing them a favour or trying to see their point of view". Charismatic people also have this air of being genuinely interested in you and what you have to say, and I don't think it's all act; at least part of it must be genuine -- people are not all stupid and some of them would smell a fake. Now Atsura, he has charisn'tma. But he is also enough of a megalomaniac to want to have all available tools for his Hazatoha game in Deadfire setting, so he tries to fake charisma with a little help of his mind readers; only he is not as intelligent as his fellow dispassionate chess masters Robert House of New Vegas and G0-T0 of KOTOR2, who both chose to be honest and work with what they had rather than make fools of themselves by trying to imitate something they have exactly zero grasp on, because -- unfortunately for Atsura -- charisma is a Je Ne Sais Quoi thing and his attempts at humanity are not that good, leaving people creeped out, suspicious and therefore less susceptible to do his bidding.

It dropped for me from Canta Nicese Nirro in literally last fight of the game.

Another contribution to "Atsura is a manipulative creep" collection. Here's my Hannibal Bleakwalker getting endgame quest from him:

And it's not even the only thread. Nor the only forum.

They can also serve as noisemakers if you need someone be absent from the place you want to sneak past.

You are also a very seasoned combatant, and your party members are too (mostly). Yet you can get SURROUNDED by a group of nobodies. Ambush itself is fine, but the fact that some random pirates are able to surround your veteran group is dumb. Hey sorry for wanting some RPG in a RPG ;p Those guys are not hostile unless you choose to attack them. Do you always roleplay Charnames who attack people on sight if you don't like the way they approach you?

Methinks you are wasting your spells in vain, comrades necromancers -- betcha our Nice Guy OP quit Deadfire as soon as he reached Neketaka and discovered all those women in positions of power.

Nice to meet another game music aficionado (albeit my own tastes are more on "VtM: Bloodlines" and "Brutal Legend" side and I am probably the only person on Earth who finds ESO series music ultimately nondescript). (Also SWTOR: Imperial Agent story is one of my favourite RPGs, and pretty high on the list. It's criminally wasted as a part of a MMO) Also2, Mask of the Betrayer's soundtrack was fantastic and complemented game's atmosphere really well. Also3, Arcanum's soundtrack is to RPGs what Ennio Morricone's scores are to Westerns.

While you're at this, can you also fix that thing in Fallout 2 where you can beeline from Arroyo to Navarro, steal their OP stuff and get a crapton of XP? It's retroactively ruining muh immershun.

Or if everything else fails, you can always use the conversation exploit - put a party member in stealth, position them next to the target, initiate conversation with the target with another party member, wait for the red circle to be gone, end conversation, hit pause real fast before red circle is back, voila. Works in shops too.

Sometimes I think about creating a Steam account for Dishonored 2 and Prey because I do not want to pirate Arkane Studios, but then I look at my 300+ unplayed games on GOG, think "Maaaaaybe after I finished these" and dodge getting steamed for another day. (If anyone from Arkane is reading this, it totally, absolutely, definitely was not a hint, you guys. )

Hey, fling is a sort of relationship. Personally, I mucho prefer Tekehu's and Maia's "Hey boss, wanna f†ck?" to Overly Attached Aloth. Anyway, lets not make this into yet another romance thread perhaps, hmmmm? Romances seem to derail every discussion, so better keep them contained in their own thread.

Nice catch about Eothas acting like a typical RPG protagonist -- leaving a wave of corpses on his way to victory, unstoppable, uncaring...yep. All signs are here. As for companions being not that into you and quests where seemingly optimal resolution leads to Very Bad Things happening -- it might seem novel in, well, a CRPG-verse as a whole, but for an Obsidian game it's quite normal, even expected -- the studio is famous for subverting expectations and tropes rather than going along with them, after all. Like, there is a companion in "Fallout:New Vegas" who doesn't even bother to hide his low opinion about your protagonist; for another, you do her quest in a way that seems to lead to warm fuzzies but actually ends with mass murder; in "KOTOR2", a planet fares better if you support the violent dictator as opposed to the benevolent queen and all your followers are drawn to you because you unwittingly cast (Force equivalent of) Charm all the time; in the ending of "Mask of the Betrayer" you have to do quests in particular way to please all your allies -- just to discover later that doing so caused a horrible tragedy in one of your former companion's life. In short, it's Obsidian being Obsidian.

+ 666 re: Frictional. Cautious about Call of Cthulhu since it's not Frictional doing it. Also here's hoping Ice-Pick Lodge will finish Pathologic 2 within current decade.

I think it's a necessity, even. Not only you will be taking sneaky unlabeled points, but I remember one case where I had no other option but to take diplomatic. So just imagine your character has "See disposition" trait like Atsura, and turn them on.

Tekehu confronts Maia at one point and later you have a conversation where they hug it out; Pallegina has enough of Tekehu, with consequent making peace conversation; Aloth has problems with Tekehu, but -- being Aloth -- does not confront him directly and complains to you instead; Maia and Xoti can be into each other and both asks you for advice; I hear there is Maia vs Pallegina confrontation but I never triggered that one; as for Xoti vs Pallegina, you can tell either of them to be more understanding, not sure if there is a follow-up; Maia and Serafen do not have any special interactions, but seem to genuinely like each other. Cannot really answer that first part of your question. Theoretically you should, romances and personal quests are separate lines, but people complain romances are wonky, so...

I could wax arguments about how Huana society is actually changing for good and how it is their right to evolve on their own pace, but ain't gonna. Instead, again - It. is. their. home. All the others are occupants. Occupants cannot be good by the very definition. It's really very simple.

As Celan said, its their home, so yes.

I took Serafen because I like him. I put on hiatus my "Side with fascists or slavers for teh Greatur Gud!!1!" run to rush and experience the poison cheese before it gets nerfed, but I don't think I will ever side with Alvari. Too evil.

That's how my Beguiler/Assassin mostly rolls too.

Something like that, yes. "And so the god Eothas destroyed the foundation of the world order as we knew it for millennia, and lo behold nobody noticed because Deadfire's factions were all busy ripping new ones to each other".

Yeah, though I'm surprised that Obsidian was surprised. All of the factions are unpleasant (more or less) and there is clearly not a "good" faction option. And I'm not complaining about it, but for me it's obvious that you'd have to roleplay a pretty fanatic character to stick with a given faction to the end. Not necessarily -- it could be a cynical character who just wants to throw in with the winners, an entrepreneurial character looking out for profit, an indifferent character who's all "whatever if it takes me where I want to go", a diplomatic character who understands there's time for compromises, etc, etc... Obsidian might have been surprised because Deadfire's "loner ending = downer ending", but that's somewhat a novelty -- usually loner endings in RPGs are pretty cool, like in New Vegas, or (my personal favorite) VtM: Bloodlines. Chances are a lot of players picked it out of inertia, expecting the cool to happen again...and then it didn't.

Heh. Benweth is annoying, cowardly sh†t-talking sleazebag who fails to kill you in the very beginning of the game, prefers to strike at you from behind the backs of his goons or at least sic them on you first; there are multiple ways that you can get at him, you can either let him live for no good reason, let him live but humiliate him, or you can kill him and wear his tacky outfit. Reminds me of certain other Benny.

Here's a few. Atsura meets... ...a feelings about EVERYTHING guy: ...a stoic, rational type: 'sfunny, he has the same response for shady as for rational: Anyway, if there is one good thing about siding with the slavers, is that it completely throws Atsura off balance. He's still smug and condescending if you don't blow up that Adra pillar. but hoo boy what a spectacular meltdown he has when you tell him about your Crookspur alliance.

He's a cheating metagamer who can see Watcher's dispositions and pull strings accordingly is what he is.