FlintlockJazz

Is it me or does it appear like they changed their minds and reverted back to being able to have six characters in the party? Also, Aloth doing a bunch of collateral damage, and one of the 'misses' is in yellow for some odd reason, a bug maybe. Nice QoL addition though. Could it be that the six portraits at the top includes enemies? I can count five distinct characters including one called Player in the log itself, plus an enemy called "Neketeka Guard" who they are attacking and would make it six involved in the fight. So maybe it segregates the combat log into separate logs for each battle which are then identified by the participants involved?

Intriguing, good connection you found there. I'm not going to allow my hopes to be gotten up, even if it is Sega they are working with and not a new IP it could be they are working on one of Sega's preexisting IPs (like a Sonic the Hedgehog RPG...) and not one they worked with Sega before on. A man can dream though, a man can dream...

It isn't obvious, but here is the rough idea: If you are running a large company and a small competitor is making similar stuff better than you are, you have four choices. 1. Buy them and sell their stuff instead of yours. (e.g. Google buying YouTube and shutting down Google Video) 2. Buy them and let their stuff rot, just to get rid of the competition. (e.g., (not exactly an acquisition, but) Microsoft hired the senior developers of the Mach micro kernel, stuck them in the playpen known as Microsoft Research and did nothing with Mach) 3. Lose in the marketplace. (e.g Yahoo vs. Google). 4. Make better stuff and out compete them (eg. .... hmm drawing a blank here, I'm sure this must happen sometimes) 4a. Use an effective monopoly position to kill them in spite of their stuff being better (e.g. The U.S. v. Microsoft anti-trust court case) Whether a company chooses option 1 or 2 probably depends partly on the attitudes of the decision makers (are they trying to get paid to make the best stuff or are they trying to make money) and partly on how entrenched the products are vs. how much the acquisition costs. That is, if a small company is cheap to buy and shutting down a project and marketing a different product is very expensive, it is rational for the larger company to kill the smaller one (even though it hurts consumers of the products). Overall, isn't necessarily an evil company doing nefarious things, they might buy a company, spend time looking at all of the options they now have, and make the best decision they can. The issue is that what is best for a single company isn't what's best for everybody. This why there are antitrust laws in many countries. and why it might be better if there were stronger ones (but carefully, because it is difficult to get things exactly right and not overdo it). Finally, note that there are a lot of other reasons for acquisitions and there are a lot of reasons why a company might complete an acquisition and shutter the acquired company later. The above is just to give you the gist of one situation. In addition to what Yonjuro has said, remember that their customers will only spend so much per month on games, they only have so much time to commit to each game etc, and so are only likely to buy a certain number of games at a time. If all those games are yours, great, but quite often they'll buy one of your games and not the other, and while you get the money for the first game the second game ends up wasting you money, and your products end up competing with themselves which is not good for you. With the costs of triple-A gaming they want to maximise profits and so sell it to as many people as possible, and another product is a rival to that even if it is your own product. That's yet another reason why a game will never get greenlit by a company even if it would do really well, because it may impact on another of their product (add to this, if you are the head of X game development cycle and you hear that a colleague in your company is proposing Y game that could threaten yours, what would you do?).

Considering we already know the ship is our base, and you start with the ship, I don't see this happening. Though I suspect getting to the first main city will be much faster than it was in Eternity 1. I could see the party hitting port at that city after the prologue, perhaps with an Irenicus Lair size path of content before. It certainly would make sense to head straight to that city from Dyrwood and recruit some party members and crew in terms of pacing and narrative. I wouldn't be surprised if the prologue was set in the Dyrwood, you know, Thus The Journey Begins Chapter. And then you end up in Neketaka. This is pretty much exactly what I'm expecting. The ship is both stronghold and main form of transportation throughout the game. You can't wait to get it until halfway through; it's your *main form of transportation throughout the game*. Now, you get other ships later. Better ships. Bigger, more badass, etc. The Defiant is just the one you *start* with. Speaking of New Heomar and where you start, I wouldn't mind the prologue being set in or starting off there, even if all we see are the docks or even just a view from our ship. It was mentioned a fair bit in Pillars, seemed like a rather interesting place yet you never got to go there, kinda intrigued on what it looks like.

Oh yes, I agree completely. Thing is, many of those things can be said about BG2 as well, especially the main plot. I mean, if you think about it, the whole motivation for Irenicus is that he tried to eat a tree, got caught, and the chick who ruled the place that he was also banging basically went, "I know, I will help him learn by stripping him of his soul so he has no conscience whatsoever and then unleash him upon the world, that will work..." You also got the usual D&D issues like trying to kill characters off in a world with easy resurrection: "Oh no my husband is dead!" "Er, lets just take him to a priest..." "Oh no, not possible, nope, not if you want to bang me..." I made the mistake when I was younger thinking that what made the BG games for me was the story. After all, games like the Elder Scrolls were all about open sandbox play and minimal story, and I wasn't so keen on them, so it must be that! It was only when I played Dragon Age, saw what BG would have been like without the side quests and purely about 'the story' (yeah I know there were some side quests, but they were more "While you're doing the main plotline, see if you fall over this item..." kind of thing) that I realised I had it wrong. It was the combination story and sandbox adventuring that I liked about BG, by themselves each part was quite hideously flawed but together they worked to make you feel like a tabletop adventurer imho. Athkatla in BG2 was rammed full of side quests, strongholds, and little random things, many of which were linked in surprising ways and yet could be overlooked. You may pick up a quest that took you to Trademeet (one of my favourite places in BG2) to do one thing only to find a series of more quests there including resolutions to quests you did elsewhere, and yet the entire place was optional! People talk about the story and main villain in BG2, but I find the more you look into it critically the more I find both Irenicus and the plotline rather shallow. I read somewhere that the Underdark section is where most people who don't finish the game tend to drop out, after Athkatla and in one of the more linear sections of the game. Bioware have said that they regretted overloading Athkatla with so much stuff but chapters 2 and 5 (the chapters where you have free roaming of Athkatla) is where people seem to have the most fun! Of course, this is pretty much all opinion, but if you can't subject people to opinion pieces on forums then where else?

I think this is plausible. Said companion is much more vorbose in the subsequent expansion. Yep, she suddenly finds her mouth again in the expansion! :D I used to feel BG2 was better than 1 as well, and without mods or the Beamdog polishing (which was just the applying of aforementioned mods at install with some prettying up, but I digress) it is technically better, but I have since found an appreciation for the first one. First one had a bit more exploration and a bit less grimness than the second, plus I seem to enjoy lower level adventuring more than high level I find. Just mho of course, just one I find interesting in how it has changed over the years.

What if one of the companions gets kidnapped and players must go rescue them. Then while on their journey, another party member is unmasked to be a traitor and surprise attacks the party! Upon their death it is revealed that an evil cipher placed them under a permanent Whisper of Treason spell, but now you have an extra party slot for the soon-to-be-rescued member. Naaaah, such a flimsy idea will never sell Funnily enough I think the original idea was that the companion who are referencing who was to be rescued was to die, making the whole rescue her plot redundant and quite frankly crap in my opinion (forcing the player to go on a rescue in the first place, only to swipe the goal at the last second and leave you with nothing...) They changed it quite late when they finally twigged it would have been a rubbish idea, but that is why she barely has any lines once you rescue her.

Thanks for clarification. Could you link the source, please?I have a feeling that you are confusing power source points with empower charges. The latter are indeed restored on rest. I've seen that post and was aware of cost refunds. Yeah he has, he seems to think that they are per rest when they sound to be per encounter as Josh likens them to the Monk's Wound mechanic, though the developers have not stated outright that this is the case so no one can claim for definite as yet.

Thanks dude for collecting all these! Exposing yourself to twitter is going above and beyond the call of duty, you need a medal.

There's already plenty of human and dwarven ones, the Orlan and Aumaua portraits are the ones that need more of. I said more orlans, and there are not plenty of dwarven ones and none of them fit the Vailian theme despite being one of the two main races from there.

If memory serves, he's never actually able to produce proof for his theories. The tablets are left fragmented and largely illegible, though I do remember being able to get him to trace bits and pieces of them. AFAIR, if he goes back and persists in his claims, he loses academic credibility but still manages to attract interest and patronage from those who are less concerned about his formal credentials. I'd expect his sister to have mixed feelings about that at best, but who knows. Then again, I certainly haven't seen all of his endings. If there is one where the tablets are somehow preserved and he is fully vindicated before his people, that's a different story I suppose.

More Orlans full stop, more Dwarves and ones that include the PoE specific versions of dwarves (swashbuckling Vailian dwarves for instance) instead of just the stereotypical fantasy ones.

Can I just clarify the point we are at with this discussion? Are we no arguing about what it is people are arguing about regarding Ydwin? Not criticising, just trying to make sure I have it right.

I'd like them to do kinda like Fencing Schools, where you learned particular 'styles' and techniques, with maybe needing to sign up to a school to learn them and having rival schools that would beat each other up in the street. Fencing Schools by the way do not focus just on rapiers, you had ones for Longsword fighting, pollaxing people etc and many actually taught a collection of weapons so that you always knew how to handle an appropriate weapon for the situation (kinda like the focus groups I felt were going for).

Lots. Too much to go into, you should play it again and find out for yourself. Dual-wielding Eder kicks arse personally.

I want lightsaber blades for my Cipher...

It seems most likely that Kana's ending will have at least some bearing on the Watcher's interactions with her, but if memory serves, the rest of Kana's family assume more conventional Rauatai attitudes of militaristic expansion and resistance to outside influence, so him having a favorable opinion of the Watcher may actually cause Kana's family to resent the Watcher as someone who has been further enabling his delusions. As for meeting Maia, we know that she's a Rauatai ship captain involved in the effort to claim the Huana as subjects of the Rauatai nation. We also know that she's working with a courtier named Atsura and struggling to find her footing amidst all the political maneuvering that's going (as mentioned here - https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=263#updates). From what's been revealed so far, the mention of politics and the accompaniment of one of the Ranga Nui's courtiers may suggest interactions with Queen Onekaza II within the city of Neketaka, which seems to be the likeliest place for such intrigues to occur given the Queen's efforts to play the Vailians and Rauatians against each other (as per - https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=256#updates). Based on this, I'd expect to first encounter Maia in Neketaka and I'd further expect that encounter to be related to her duties as opposed to some sort of meeting that Kana arranged, especially since the Watcher may have killed, ignored, or fed him to the blood pool during the previous game. I'm guessing it depends on how successful Kana is in presenting his views. If you convince him to take the tablet with him then he becomes an influential voice for progress as his theories are proven correct, so his sister might become more progressive as well.

I think they were a novel idea that didn't really work well, they drew attention to the fact that the avatars didn't really look that good close up.

Whatever they did must have involved one hell of an ugly stick to end up like this!

Yeah, a couple of my characters in my current playthrough are wearing those Eoten belts, give +3 constitution or something. Seen a few references them a fair bit, not seen one though. Imps not even heard of ingame.

HA! Good Fun! Never has Gromnir's usual sign off been so dark...

I want to ride dragons. That is all.

I will do the same if I'd win. Heh, we're increasing Katarack21's odds here. I will also do the same! (As I live in the UK, the international shipping costs would probably pay for another mousemat).

Okay, after looking up what you get when googling, I would just like to say that I was purely thinking of it in a FPS shooter kind of way and was not thinking of the further connotations at all. Further to this, I would like to apologise for destroying this thread and for mentally scaring you all. I shall now boot up Pillars of Eternity to continue my Cipher playthrough as penance for my posting...

Sorry, must be in a nefarious mood today. Or too much tea, probably shouldn't post after drinking five cups in a row...