FlintlockJazz

As a backer I am getting it day one naturally. And as I am currently off work waiting for my leg to heal and got plenty of free time... yeah baby I got time off to play it all the time. Of course, I have had the last few weeks Deadfire-less, wasted time off, and knowing my luck I'll get sent back to work as soon as it comes out...

And if I remember correctly they never fixed the Vernon (is that the right name for the Shepard fanboy) decision, he always acted like you had take the renegade decision in ME1 and punched him.

Where we are going...

There's no way for Iovara out of Breith Eaman that doesn't involve her becoming a servant to one of the gods. Regardless of how much she knows about the god's secrets, she could only act on that knowledge to whatever degree her patron god would allow. So for her, it's either an eternity of imprisonment, or an eternity of servitude to a god she knows to be fabricated. Destroying her soul is the only way to grant her true peace. At least that's how I understood it. Um, patron god? Afaik, nobody forces people to worship the gods on Eora. Their presence is undeniable and people know they're out there, but Eora is not one of the AD&D worlds where you either believe in some god or go the Wall of the Faithless to get punished. If they released Iovara's soul to the wheel then she simply would have been reborn through the wheel system and forgot about her past self - that's what she was against. She seemed to believe that the wheel system was in gods hands and didn't want to be a part of it. You made me think I was going crazy for a while, but luckily I make a hard save every couple minutes for exactly this kind of situation here's a screenshot directly from the game that made me think Iovara could only leave as a servant. Also, apologies for the size. Don't know how to make an expandable section :/ She is talking about getting free by accepting forgiveness from the gods, which is not the returning her to the wheel option others are talking about. You have the choice to forcibly free her from the prison without getting forgiveness from the gods (which also does not free them from the island anyway and so cannot return them to the wheel, as she actually states in the screenshot) and send her off to the wheel. So she can leave due to the Watcher without pledging to any of the gods, yet for some reason she is opposed to it because she will forget the tooth.

Check the post by FlintlockJazz: But i mean, you're literally able to drag Iovara (kicking and screaming) back into the wheel, even if the whole prison was designed that way (and let's assume that gods can't actually release him), what's there to prevent a Leaden Key Watcher (it's not like Watchers are one in a million, i mean you run into Maerwald) from doing the same to Thaos? All i'm saying is that no matter what you choose to do with him, in the end, i don't think it even matters. My impression is that Watchers are meant to be exceptionally rare, that a real one IS a one in a million kind of deal. You actively hunt down Maerwald and his presence was included for story purposes (to show you what will happen and as a story hook). I also don't see the Leaden Key having Watchers in their ranks, in fact they actively hunt down and kill Watchers as potential threats, and to release Thaos they have to know he's there (only you actually know what happened to his soul, even your party members won't know unless your character has told them since all they would see is Thaos dying and perhaps your character standing looking vacant in their usual Watcher-way) AND to be able to get down there, which wasn't easy and required the support of the gods, and once they get down there they run the risk of finding out the truth that the Leaden Key had been keeping secret from itself. And it probably won't matter. I just like the idea of forcing Thaos and Iovara to spend eternity together, plus most of my characters like the idea that they can potentially access Thaos at a later date if needed.

Hey, I just realised, my ankle operation might actually be done by the time Deadfire comes out! Meaning I may have recovery time to play it!

From what I was hearing regarding the beta I am not surprised that they are putting the dates back to be honest, especially with the flip flopping with Might (but Might is cool and you all know it). As for the open world debate, who cares?

I locked Thaos in the well. I know many seem to think there's nothing to stop the gods from releasing the souls in there, since its mentioned that those who ask and are given forgiveness are freed, but I think that's a misinterpretation: they are not freed from Breith Eaman, they are just able to wander the surface above it and are not bound to the rock. Even the gods can't seem to fully free the people there, and their souls don't return to the cycle of reincarnation. It is the forgiven ones who enable you to survive the fall into the well once you gain the support of one or more gods, if they were freed then what are they still doing there? As the wiki states regarding Breith Eaman: To achieve release, they had to beg the forgiveness of a god, pledge their soul to them, and then they would be lifted from this place to the world above. In truth, they received leniency but not true mercy. The spite of Woedica is eternal and so the souls would linger above, at the site of the old Court, not permitted to leave the island, forever severed from the cycle. https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Breith_Eaman So they would be released from the adra prison but not from Breith Eaman is my reading, and while it mentions the spite of Woedica I don't think it is actually her power that locks them there and that it is beyond the power of the gods to truly release people from there, even Woedica.

Looks Witcher-related going by the Wolf-school medallion she is wearing and the Witcher-style eyes.

I want, no, I NEED this. *slobbers everywhere* Ahem, I mean, jolly good showing chaps! Looking forward to trying out this ship stuff and the sea shanties and all that. Tally ho!

Regarding support characters not being popular, I find that it tends to rely upon the type of game. If you are playing a game where you have just one character you control then they tend to be more popular I find particularly in group games or actual tabletop roleplay games where you'll have one guy be the healer because they like helping others more and may not be that interested in the actual combat, playing the more non-violent role. In Pillars and other party based games where you control all the characters then you'll be controlling both the healers and combat characters anyway so there is no avoiding focusing on combat anyway. Also consider how formations usually puts the party leader at the front with how most players prefer to keep their custom character in the leader slot because they want to play "their" character rather than an NPC they have picked up. In a multiplayer game you won't mind hiding at the back because you are still playing "your" character and the guys in front of you are other players anyway, in a singleplayer party game moving your character to the back kinda feels like you are no longer directly playing your character. This kinda encourages players to build more front-line focused characters to avoid doing this. Now also consider the effect that most of these games also require the social skills to be held by the main character if they are going to be used in conversation, this causes a lot of people to give their character social skills they wouldn't normally take as they don't like to miss stuff. In a way, Pillars and Baldur's Gate encourages certain character types over others for the main character. This is just my observation though and I make no claims to the scientific validity of anything I have posted.

Agree especially with point 2! The whole reason we are in an uproar (yes, an uproar, this is a travesty!!!!) about the lack of dwarven COMPANION is that we want a dwarven COMPANION! This isn't called the Dwarven MC Recovery Front but the Dwarven COMPANION Recovery Front! Dwarves are bros! On this note, though, I am going to start up a game soon now with the dwarven playthrough I always intended. Which brings us to point 3, there is no really decent dwarf portrait for what I want, where's the Pirate Dwarf pictures??! They are supposedly the second major population after Ocean Humans in Vailia of course there needs to be Pirate Dwarves! When they started collecting data from our games I had lost most of my playthroughs due to being on an older computer I don't currently have access to or having made the mistake of copying them off to save room only to discover later that they were now no longer compatible due to version changes (thing I know how to get around that but involves reinstalling the game in stages). So my Wizard, Nature Paladin, or Orlan playthroughs probably not been counted. So obviously all their data is wrong and I am going to have to single-handedly fix it by creating and playing through a slew of characters of various types, Dwarf Rogue Cooks and Nature Paladin Wayfarers and Orlan Rangers included. This may take a while.

We had terrorists in the UK try to use vehicles to kill people, the effectiveness compared to firearms wasn't that great. The guy would not have been able to get 17 kids with a bus, not unless they were all sat there in a line while high on drugs or something. A driver's license is also required before you can go purchasing your death-vehicle, and questions have been asked and rules strengthened in reaction to vehicular deaths quite often even when it wasn't a deliberate attack but an accident (such as when a lorry mowed through a bunch of cars before the **** driver was too busy on his phone).

I'm definitely interested in the ship stuff and its one of the new things I am looking forward to in this game. Having something like this has been a fantasy of mine for a long time, such that I really hope they do it right and don't get me all excited for nothing.

BIRDS!

Actually yeah, linking in with my previous post, they should have had it revealed they had secretly upgraded it with thanix cannon tech, making it powerful enough to turn the tide of a particular battle or something by blowing up reaper ships.

Agree, people go on about the ending but to be blunt the entire main plotline was just ****e to be honest. Personally, I think the two major problems are: 1. I may be controversial with the first one, that they made the Reapers pretty much invincible except to this one special ray gun 2. They yet again stuck to the "no one believes Shepard and so are taken unawares!" Not only did this get tiresome, but it made the entire galaxy stupid and in need of reaping Now, for those who are interested (all 1 or 2 of you), I will go into the reasons why, while those who are not can shoo away to the next post. 1. In ME1 the reapers have this plan: they encourage organic life to use the relays and set up shop on the Citadel, then when they come through they immediately nom the citadel (destroying the current major governments that lead from there and get all the information on the state of the galaxy) and shut down all the relays, preventing travel between worlds, isolating them right when they need to unite to fight off the reapers. Effectively preventing the galaxy from being able to unite against them. This, to me, implied that a united galaxy could be a threat to them: that while each reaper is immensely powerful they are not invincible and knew it, and wanted to minimise the risk to themselves (each one is a nation after all, a loss of even one must be a catastrophe for them, virtual genocide). A galaxy working together could at least hold them off long enough to work out new methods and technologies to deal with them, for instance the Thanix cannon was I thought going to be Chekov's gun to show that the Citadel races were developing weapons around dealing with them secretly, which I will go into more in point 2. Sure, it could just have been to make it easier for them, after all even immortal beings would want to make things easier for themselves, but then that leads to why Sovereign was so desperate to get to the Citadel? We know now that the reapers were able to leave Dark Space without it, and that he actually jumped the gun effectively by alerting the galaxy to their existence, if they were so powerful why not just wait for his homeboys to show up first anyway? I mean, they could have had a backup relay (and why wouldn't they if they couldn't get out otherwise?). Getting the races to work together would then have been more meaningful and more 'galactic' than just saving earth. 2. When I saw the Council denying the reapers again I hoped it was just a bluff on their behalf. A bluff or a clue that they had been indoctrinated by the citadel and that the individual nations were just leaving the citadel to it while they secretly prepared. But no. Typical Bioware dumped story and logic in favour of set pieces yet again. "Oh but we gotsa have the player be the underdog because it's cool!" It was tiresome to go through it again in ME2, and made the galaxy stupid and in need of reaping. Had they gone with the nations preparing secretly (and not wanting the Cerberus-affiliated Shepard to know) then it would have helped make more sense as to why they would be able to take on the reapers AND give the previous two games more relevance since Shepard uncovering it all then had given them time to prepare. But no. Not Bioware. 3. An extra though occurs to me: if they were going to kill and resurrect Shepard then they could have at least gone into it somewhat. Had the question of your humanity been gone into, whether you even were the real Shepard or if they had died at the start of ME2, then it could have been a bit more high brow. Actually, scrap that, this is Bioware, they would not have been able to do it justice. I mean, they don't even get what a transhuman is right in the game (seriously, there is a conversation with EDI about it and they get it COMPLETELY WRONG, and yes you are a transhuman in the game in fact most of the humans in the game are varying degrees of transhuman but of course they had to go with the human-centric angle).

I will not abide by this skullduggery. I agree, this is scandalous!

I play them to avoid answering questions like this one.

I have been wondering how the Might to Strength change would affect Ciphers as it was going to be one of my first playthroughs, but as I am not in the beta I do not have any hands-on experience with how its all working and so didn't feel I could comment much on it. I will however be following threads like this to see what I can glean from the skulls of those who have been, so don't take a lack of posting from me on this as a lack of interest keep on posting (on topic). The Jazz will be watching you...

You know what gets my goat going? How everyone likes to talk about Social Justice Warriors but what about the Social Justice Wizards? Social Justice Rogues? Clerics? Nothing! And they are the most fundamental classes too, what about Paladins, Rangers, Monks, Druids, and Bards??! This is an outrage! And when the hell did we have to start using the term SJW? Back in my day it was called White Knighting and was perfectly fine! Now we have a three word term that is so long we have to acronym it! I mean, how you are meant to verb it properly? Damn kids! Get off my lawn! Where am I again? Stop telling me to take my meds! Beat you with my cane I will!

He's not exactly a god, I'm pretty sure in the story they delve into that in the last missions, that thaos's people tried looking for the gods and couldn't find them anywhere they looked or went using animancy, and other technological advances. So they made them selves "gods" in order to prevent wide out rage and chaos that if there where no gods intern there are no consequences to what a person does. We know the gods are created, doesn't really stop them being gods despite what Iovara said. The first greek gods were created by the Titans, and others were born of god-human pairings (Zeus in particular, the horny bastard), while other religions had humans ascending to godhood. It was more the origins of the gods that was the secret, and whether them being created made them unworthy of worship or not.

My understanding is that Engwithan civilisation had already pretty much ended when Ondra drowned the cities, that most of the population had been used to create the gods and the leftovers were the ones who then spread the religion to other faiths. The Glanfathans claimed that the Engwithans gave them the land to live on in return for making sure no one entered the ruins, that it was requested by the gods. Of course, this is all oral tradition and one that we know is based on lies as it is, so the truth of any of this is potentially up in the air.

That must be true! Obviously I was disappointed by the lack of all thems DRMs!