GaleWeaver

Okay? I never said they did, and neither do the game endings. What is your point? My entire post is about the fact that the ending doesn't need to spell any of this stuff out for you. You can assume it based on the character that you LITERALLY made and roleplayed through the entire story with.

I'm guessing that quick saving and then exiting to menu and then restarting didn't fix the corpse. My best idea would be to download the console command tool for this game and use that open the lock. Or you can start over that segment.

Deadfire did this with Serafen, which I thought was pretty awesome. I already liked him as a character, and not being tied down is totally believable for his personality. I got a pretty good laugh out of how he reacts to you if you're a Fire Godlike and try to sleep with him.

Honestly, he's such a naive idiot, that this makes sense. Further more, those two skills right there are literally under a tab called LEADERSHIP. You are a leader, at least in Felix's eyes, and you're trying to get him to follow along with your plan. It makes sense, even if it is kind out of nowhere because those skills really don't come up in dialog skill checks very often. spoken like somebody who has never done a companion build. Consider the following: it's not supposed to be an easily made check. You're trying to convince somebody who is MOSTLY illogical to go against their core beliefs. It's like trying to talk a holy man out of his religion, which hilariously enough, you can actually do with Vicar Max. At the time of me reading this, I actually do agree here, but I should note that I have not attempted a full run where I invest super hard into the dialog skills. In my personal experience though, there were not a whole lot of chances to use dialog skill checks, and I think the highest one I saw was like a 65 persuasion or something? I would've liked more ways of interacting with the skills through dialog, but again, I haven't dedicated a run to doing so, so it's possible I might be missing a lot of instances where you can do the stuff I'm talking about.

Doesn't the shopkeeper die at at the end of that quest anyways?

I did like her, but then I kept doing jobs for and I found out not only is she completely insane, but she's also kinda stupid.

Yeah, I'm in agreement, being a cruel bastard seems a bit limited in this game. I'll never forget that moment where I was siding with the board, and Felix started piping up about it. I passed an Intimidation check while talking to him, and he just goes "I ain't afraid of you, boss." I proceeded to shoot him right then and there in the middle of the ship kitchen aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it did nothing. Total blue balls. I get that they don't want you shooting your companions by mistake during combat, but did they really need to make them unkillable by the player outside of combat? If I wanna shoot mutineers in the face on my own damn ship, I should be able to!

When SPECIFICALLY did the notification for failing the quest pop up? Was it immediately after talking with Ellie, and did you try to leave your ship when she "disappeared" to see if she was still on the Companion Selection screen? I know what story route you're talking about, and neither way of entering Byzantium for me has caused Parvati to disappear. Can you replicate what caused it? I'm curious about this - it sounds like it might be a bug, or you overlooked something that could potentially have made Parvati leave, but that's pretty hard to do from what I understand. Pretty much nothing short of killing Reed or Junlei will accomplish that.

The ending is kept intentionally vague as far as what The Unplanned Variable does, because the only person who knows what your character would do after the game is over is YOU. As others have pointed out, they do this in a lot of their games, like Pillars 2 and New Vegas to name a couple. The companions, however, are NOT you. They are their own individuals with their own goals and desires, and their own lives. There's nothing stopping you from extrapolating on what your character would do - in fact, that's the point. If you were playing a character that was nice and super close to the companions you made, then it obviously stands to reason that neither them or you would forget one another and would maybe even meet up for some drinks or to run some small jobs together. My first playthrough's ending of this game was very memorable for me. I sided with Welles and when he asked me what I was gonna do when it was all over, I simply said "I'm gonna do what always have - Whatever I want." With an ending like that, you don't need anything spelled out for you, you're the architect of your own character, after all.

Yeah, I kinda figured. I don't even bother with the Navkey most times. Landing on Cascadia at low levels and hauling ass while Mantisaurs and Raptidons try to eat me is way more fun. I made it to Stellar Bay at level 8 before, pretty sure I could do it even lower, too. Just don't fight the mantisaurs at that level, it's like fighting deathclaws in the beginning of New Vegas.

Honestly, I'm extremely refreshed after playing TOW and seeing the lack of romance options. It makes the characters feel more like characters to me, and it lets me focus purely on the interactions with them and the kinds of people they all are, as well as lends them a sense of independence and agency. The characters don't feel like they're obligated to fall in love with you just because you're the super special main character. It makes it feel more like you're just some dude/chick doing their own thing in the world and in fact really aren't special at all aside from being a popsicle for a bit. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of having romance options in the game, but they have to be handled delicately and done right, and I mean no offense when I say this, but Obsidian has a record of not really doing the romance stuff in a justifiable and believable manner. I absolutely don't blame them for that because it requires a pretty heavy degree of writing and build up to accomplish this, and considering they tend to make shorter games designed to be replayed, it makes sense. Even if they did, romance is a complex subject to replicate within the confines of a game. Think about how dynamic and complex real romantic relationships can be - it simply does not translate that well into a system that has to follow defined rules like video games unless you forgo a lot of things for the writing to accommodate it, like some Visual Novels tend to do. I think they were able to do a reasonably good job depicting romance in a real sense with Parvati and her quest though, but it required the player to be a spectator to work. You get to see the all the doubt, anxiety, etc that goes into falling for a person, and there's even a bit of a minor speedbump in the road when Junlei mentions another girl to Parvati. That combined with it taking the whole quest line for them to finally get together makes it feel a lot more realistic. People take time to build connections like that, and that probably is even more so the case in the setting of TOW. Parvati's companion quest takes forever, and requires you to more than likely be nearing the final stretch of the game (I'm aware you can get to Byzantium and Monarch's towns pretty early, but you're still limited by things like bits and such to make it there and complete her companion quest).

So, I was doing my 2nd run a while back, trying to get in good with as many factions as possible, and was doing the distress signal quest. The first time I did it, I didn't think too much of it because I was RPing as a completely amoral mercenary. It was basically "hey your colleague, Jameson is dead, give me some cash. Also I sold your research to a black market fence in the Groundbreaker okaaaay byeeeee". This time around though, I had a lot more to say to him regarding the way he treats his colleagues and is so self obsessed. I passed a few persuasion checks on the matter - was trying to give him more of a "tough love" approach, maybe get him to rethink his values and priorities. Quest gets finished, I start heading towards the door to leave, and suddenly hear a loud gun shot from behind me. I ALMOST ignored it, but put 2 and 2 together and went back in the lab to find Anton shot himself and was dead. All I have to say is just: BRUUUUUUUUUH. Looking forward to trying to save Jameson this time around, as the quest journal synopsis seemed to indicate he only died because I ran off to do other stuff first instead of bee lining for him. Also feel free to share and talk about your experiences with this quest and it's outcomes or just in general any quest(s) that stand out to you guys a lot.