FlintlockJazz

I'm guessing you need the souls you consume to cause the overload and destroy the machine. Considering that destroying it implies the souls get destroyed too it becomes a sacrifice, otherwise there would be no reason to not free the souls and still destroy the machine. As we don't know how 'durable' these Engwithan devices are it could be a case that it is the only way to destroy it at the time, but without knowing for sure it does feel a bit of a forced dilemna (basically free, destroy, or munch choices). I could be misremembering however, as I am actually right in the middle of Heritage Hill in my current playthrough at the moment I'll be sure to take note of anything mentioned in regards to this.

Amusingly here, if you speak out against Israel you are marked as anti-semitic.

As a Brit, I'm surprised they actually went after a meaningful target for once (the Houses of Parliament) rather than just doing their usual thing of killing as many innocents as possible.

Er, personally I see it from all sides, think it depends on your own political leanings and who you hang around with. People often only knowingly engage a person of a differing view when they are arguing with them, other times they hang with like-minded friends or don't discuss politics at all. The most extreme example of what you are suggesting that I have seen was of a (US political party) Libertarian who loved Ayn Rand. Both the Right and Left leaning members of the forum we were on found his constant postings of his favourite pet hates and proclamations to be tiring, especially since trying to engage with him usually resulted in him launching personal attacks while accusing everyone else of ad hominens and dichotomies and the like. Fun times.

Regarding Geralt's lack of emotion: that's not actually true, its a misconception held by a lot of people in the setting about Witchers, and which Geralt sometimes plays to in order to get away with things. I think this is a large part of the reason why there is such different perspectives on the games: we have been taught, particularly by Bioware games, to accept whatever people to say as usually the character we are talking to is just an exposition dumper, whereas the Witcher games will lie to you. Half the characters in the Witcher games will deliberately lie to murky the waters and the other half don't know the real truth and will just tell you what they heard which isn't true either. Most games, most shows even, are very reluctant to do this, not trusting the viewer to work out the truth because of prior conditioning.

I'm sure we have all seen this, but it is a classic, though scratch off the "some years from now" part as I feel it has already happened. Bioware now is either just a skin EA puts on now and again or the dead body has been turned into a puppet that EA controls by ramming its arm up its arse. Elbow. Deep.

Omigod I remember this thread? Where the hell has my life gone these past few years?? You have destroyed this game for me you complete and utter bastard! How could you, now I will never again be able to look at the lore without seeing this huge gaping hole there!

Anyone else wonder if Twin Sting was possibly Obsidian testing how something like dual wielding pistols (two shots before reload) would work?

The first time I ever played BGII multiplayer, it was with a group of friends who had already worked their way quite a way into the game and I was joining partway through. Created my character, joined in, took a look at my inventory and was like "Wow, I got lots of gold! Must be to help gear me out." Immediately ran over to the shops and set about buying the best, most expensive weapons and armour I could find. The concept of shared gold didn't cross my mind...

I'd go with this, probably be easier at least for me to decide too. A separate thread may be better though, keep them focused.

Many of the awards I flip flop on or have a 'current' favourite due to my mood, so going to answer just a few. Best Story : Best Lore : Pillars of Eternity. The Elder Scrolls games have lots of lore but that was built up over many games, while many others were based on pre-existing franchises. Pillars came in with just one game and yet has more lore than most other games around at the moment. I think people don't really grasp just how much lore has been put into it particularly in such a short amount of time, the detail and the actual thought and care. Best Protagonist : Stephen Heck. I think they should make a game called Heck Protocol and just have you as Heck blagging everyone. Best Antagonist : Hard one (wahey!). Irenicus was good until you find out about his background and realise that its all a bit ****e really (basically he tried to suck on a magic tree because his sister told him to despite banging the local queen there, then got upset that he got caught whilst Ellisime the supposedly wise queen thought it would be an absolute dandy idea to strip him of a conscience and send him out into the world... the idiocy in this hurts everyone). Sephiroth has been tainted by all the stuff after FF7. Hmmm. Best overall battle gameplay : Varies on mood and and whether we are talking about party-based RPGs, action RPGs, etc. Best boss battle : Best Character Build Design : The Sims (yeah I be trolling). Class-based, Pillars of Eternity. Classless, that's harder, I both prefer classless and acknowledge that its harder to do right. Best Itemization : Best music : Best Art Direction : Best Interface : I find I don't notice it if its good, only if its bad. Shame really, bet there have been some really well-designed ones where they put tons of effort in too. Best Content : This is one of those "Best as in amount, or as in quality or reactivity?" Baldur's Gate 2, the first half of VtM: Bloodlines, and Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt vie for this I think, but I am going to give it to Witcher 3. Best dialogues : I'm gonna go with Alpha Protocol here. The dialogue just flowed! Mikey Thorton was such a sarky little beeatch that you know he's British, or the love child of a one night stand between Jason Bourne and James Bond. That's right, Bond knocked up Bourne! Best "choose-your-own-adventure" factor :

The politics were the biggest let down for me, as you said it went from political intrigue to power fantasy. I went into the game expecting that I would be playing factions against one another, while trying to cover up my own transgressions, with death from being discovered a possibility. Realised (and restarted) once I realised that no, what it was all really about was picking a faction and doing its legwork for it. The cooldowns in a party based game didn't help though, god it reinforced my opinion that they are rubbish. You know, you're probably joking but one of the disappointments I had with Tyranny was that you couldn't do the whole petty bureaucrat thing trying to keep order and 'greater good'. I went into the first act thinking that I could try and keep order, protecting the general people while making necessary sacrifices ("Gotta kill you to keep up appearances but the rest of you can go"), but in the end it all just boiled down to "Pick one of three sides or go at it by yourself". I think I was expecting something more... 'political' I guess? Less fighting, more talking. Yup, same. I enjoyed Tyranny and loved the premise but think the execution was pretty bad. I'm not gonna spoil things but I chose a side thinking I would be able to make things go in a specific way (and the dialogue let me think I would be able to do that) but in Act II I only had the option to do things very differently from what I wanted. The only dialogue options available to make the story progress were *not* how I envisioned my actions. And I was not the only one to whom this happened. That was extremely frustrating. (And it was not the only frustrating thing) And the combat was very difficult for me, but I completely suck at strategy. The premise could have been brilliant, and many characters like Tunon would have been awesome in a different type of game (there was a surreal creepiness about him). The choosing of factions felt forced however, and as you said didn't play out as you think, it felt like a choice of 3 (4 if you include the anarchy playthrough) railroad rides more than an actual ingame choice.

Right now PoE I has good ballance. Any character is able to complete it solo and that's a sign. MP / Duel ballance should not be significative for the storyline, it should be just for fun. No, being able to complete it solo with a character does not mean they are balanced against each other. One class could be able to completely obliterate another class one on one or people could find that a all-Cipher party kills everything etc. The money is tight enough as it is, rather they spent it on making the game better than on this.

You know, you're probably joking but one of the disappointments I had with Tyranny was that you couldn't do the whole petty bureaucrat thing trying to keep order and 'greater good'. I went into the first act thinking that I could try and keep order, protecting the general people while making necessary sacrifices ("Gotta kill you to keep up appearances but the rest of you can go"), but in the end it all just boiled down to "Pick one of three sides or go at it by yourself". I think I was expecting something more... 'political' I guess? Less fighting, more talking.

Didn't a bunch of the core Bioware team--writers, leads, etc.--leave after EA bought them? I mean, Jade Empire and 3/4 of Mass Effect were prior to EA and they both show a *LOT* of that "dumbed down" stuff that you think EA forced on them. Yes, absolutely. I made some researchs in the past, and what i understood is that the 2 remaining funders of Bioware agreed with EA buying them. They both quit Bioware several years ago. And a lot of people from the original Bioware quit over the years after EA bought them. It almost seems liike the 2 remaining co funders saw a way to make cash, and started to dumb down their games (did not play Mass Effect, but Dragon Age: Origins is still a good example of game developed before EA). I could even add to help your point that EA renamed numbers of random studios they owned across the world "Bioware XXX" while none had anything to do with Bioware, just to cash on the studio's name (like The remnants of Interplay tried to cash on the Black Isle name not so long ago (it was so pitiful though..)). And hence, a good part of the crap Bioware sell nowadays is actually not actual Bioware work. But Inquisition is. And still, it's not even comparable to what the already somewhat crappy Origins was. Inquisition had a lot more of the dumbed down features i mentionned than Origins. At the very least, it's hard not to notice that EA made no good to the studio in this regard. But still, i really don't think that Dragon Age 2 would have been the same, or even existed without EA. Publishers nowadays are almighty, because... cash. They are the ones who can pay the salaries and they force disingenuous conditions on the studios who need the money not to shut down. They aim for mainstrem games, mass market. Obviously i would find that Pillars and mainstream should not fit together. I looked into this thing at points, and heard rumours and hearsay from elsewhere, and what I got from it all is that the EA buying up Bioware situation is incredibly murky. From what I understand, Bioware sold itself to a different company with the idea of merging all their stuff together and to get Bioware set up as a publicly traded company only to then have the parent company bought up by EA. This buying of EA is suspicious as it has turned out one of the guys who set up the parent company actually came from EA, and it was either all a back room deal or a big con to trick companies into being bought out (it wasn't just Bioware who was bought up in this transaction). The two founders of Bioware stayed on for pretty much exactly a year, which fits with a contractual obligation they may have signed to 'make it look like continuance of before', and then bailed not only on their company but on the gaming industry in general. This could be either them making their money and legging it or them getting screwed and not wanting to stay around anymore. Mass Effect was indeed three quarters done by the time EA bought them, but have you seen the earlier footage of Mass Effect, what they were aiming for? It was a drastically different game (you could control your squadmates directly, doing missions in different order or not by a certain time causing knock on effects, Mako being modifiable, etc). Having watched earlier footage, I see many areas in ME1 where I realised they were cut down or hangovers from an earlier plan. Now, this could be a case of the typical game developer thing of promising loads of things they then realised they couldn't do or didn't have the time and/or resources for, but it could also be a case of EA moving in and going "Hey, that works as is, push it out the door now..." Jade Empire I cannot comment on as I only played it years later after getting it on GOG and didn't really care for it, and Dragon Age Origins I'm not sure would have been much different (I wasn't impressed with it myself, and many issues with that was with its fundamental gameplay). I guess the TL;DR version is: Its very very murky, which pretty much sums up the gaming industry in general. Frack man, when did gaming become such a hellhole?

Yeah, to be a great bard, I imagine you'd have to be charismatic and have lots of musical talent. On the other hand, I imagine that you could become a Chanter just through study and practice, regardless of your crowd-pleasing ability. It's probably just because Kana is the chanter we know best, but I see them as singing history nerds. Yeah this is the impression I got, and is also because Kana is the only Chanter we really get to know in game.

Harpoons and other throwing weapons often had rope tied to them which enabled the user to pull the weapon back to them after throwing. Could be something similar here?

Yeah I'm just trying to ascertain just how much of what a Chanter does is 'performance' in the form that a Bard would do. I can't imagine Kana performing on stage like a traditional Bard would do, and there seems to be more of an emphasis on cultural stuff and traditions though that could just be Kana. I'm just trying to picture the kind of people who would develop Chanter class, whether they are all musicallly gifted or if its just the ability to tell stories that matter. I have always found it amusing that a Chanter can chant while reading scrolls though. :D

I just hope that, should a quest have us wanting to bring a specific companion along for a quest that said companion doesn't count towards the party limit while doing that quest. In BG2 I often used the sixth party slot as a hotseat for companions who wanted to come along for certain quests (e.g. Dynaheir when doing her castle, Valygar when doing the dimensional sphere etc), five characters plus hotseat felt like a proper adventuring party size to me, whereas four has always been too small whenever I have encountered it in previous games (Tyranny, Dragon Age: Origins, etc). What this means is that if I start having to use the fifth party slot as the hotseat then that actually means I only get four characters for my main party and I will not be happy. Plus, a 'free' hotseat for specific adventures encourages players to try out said companion when often they would have just not bothered with them and give them more of a chance. So, in short, I am saying okay to a party size of five as long as we get a hotseat slot in addition to our five for when we would want to take certain characters with us. Then I can rename my party the Famous Five instead of the Sexual Six, and have my characters bring a picnic basket along instead of a basket of ****. What, the rest of you don't do that?

It depends, what's the bounty for returning you to your former master?

I can't find a source, but I am sure this is how it was described in one of the Q&A streams or elsewhere. It was part of the multiclass Fig update: Plus this SA post. Cheers dude, thought this was the case but the wording on some of the other interviews made me doubt whether I had it right. That's pretty damn clear on multiclassing options for companions so all's good!

Actually, here's a thought that expands on OP's thoughts about a multi-classed Cipher/Wizard losing out on focus generation while casting spells to any Cipher: with grenades going to be a thing in Deadfire, do they contribute to focus generation? If not, then it doesn't pay to be a Alchemist Cipher...

But are they though? A Bard is more clearly a performer, whereas a Chanter seems often to be more of a Historian type character. They both fulfill a similar role in the party but the background lore on how they work seems different.

Something that I have been mulling over somewhat: just what are Chanters. Are they performers, who use their performances to perform (heh) magic? Are they Historians, like Kana, who just recite historical phrases to perform magic? Are all Chanters good storytellers? Would an Animancer Chanter be a thing or are they just more interested in folktales? It says they come from cultures with a strong oral (heh) tradition, does this mean they are all good speakers? I mean, just how 'Bard' are Chanters? Looking on the wiki (that source of up to date and accurate information...) I see that Lumdala (a certain performer) is a Chanter, supporting the concept that Chanters are performers, but then I see that Ranga Nui (the midwife) is a Chanter also, and I can't see her spending her time reciting Shakespeare (or whatever Pillars equivalent is). The ingame description is that they form groups of "performers and researchers", are they groups that do both or some that do one or another, and do they only research folktales, cultures and history or do they also research the sciences?