Luckmann

Priests in PoE almost certainly don't receive their powers from their deity. The power was inside you all along, yo. This has been adequately explained. You don't like the explanation, but that doesn't make it wrong, and your continued insistence that this is so and that the game's internals MUST CONFORM TO YOUR WILL is ... stupid? Insane? No no no, see, "roleplaying" consists of playing a role. If you are roleplaying in Eora, you take Soulbound weapons as a fact of life, because that's what you are. You, the person, may find it difficult to suspend your disbelief due to the inclusion of Soulbound weapons; you may not want to roleplay in a setting with Soulbound weapons. But that doesn't make them a "violation of roleplaying" - as if there were a magical list of rules compiled by Gary Gygax and agreed upon by all the wisest roleplayers in the land for what is and is not acceptable in fantasy roleplaying games. I'm not a fan of the mechanic either, but you're not wrong.

The question I'm asking is what part the priests of Berath played in this. He's obviously trying to find a solution, but he's convinced that this is all Berath's judgment. The fact that you can't delve deeper into why he'd think that makes the situation feel flat. At this point in the game, it should've been conveyed much more that this could very well have been Berath's judgement. In fact, thinking about it, "We don't know what causes it" is driven home quite often in the game. Absent is the fact that people are more likely to jump to conclusions, and we should've seen more of an effect from those conclusions. I think we only see Raedric pulling this conclusion, and it's not explained very well.

inorite Nothing he was doing had any effect, nor did he have any reason to believe it would. That borders on the definition of a witch hunt. I could make a case for Raedric, but it would involve a lot of assumptions and arguments not presented in the game, and it wouldn't have to do with efficiency, that's for sure. Objectively, he's quite obviously insane. It's too bad he makes such a rubbish job of rationalizing his actions.

The fact that most modern games have conditioned gamers to take twists or claims by certain characters at face value is actually something that really, really bothers me. I would've given a lot to actually be lied to convincingly, or have "good" decisions come back to haunt me because I was gullible. But it's practically never the case. I agree with you 100%, but in reality, we all "know" that we weren't lied to, and that their claims are true, and that they end up as hard-working people in an inn in Defiance Bay. And that gets to me. It's the same with Raedric, although there being completely rational arguments that could be made, is clearly made out to be the bad guy, and there's no real effort expended in trying to rationalize his behaviour beyond "Like. Berath.". And probably countless other offenders, spanning entire genres of gaming. I want to go "But I truuuusted yooou! D:" at least once.

It is never revealed what happens, but depending on what choices you make in the endgame, it can be assumed that the birth went well. It would've been nice to see a slide about her birthing the first non-hollowborn or something, I guess. It's never really revealed exactly when children are endowed with souls, so depending on that, she could end up giving birth to a non-hollowborn no matter what you choose. I mean. Unless she died during childbirth.

This is what I was thinking. I've got a lot of criticism for a lot of the Disposition dialogues in the game, but this really isn't one of them. This is in fact one of the few times the game gets it right, by not moralizing over the disposition itself, and manages to underline that Benevolent does not mean "Good". There's other instances in the game where it feels like they've attached "Deceptive" on something just because it's evil, not deceptive at all. Don't get me started on Cruel. There's so many cruel options that never get tagged with the Cruel disposition, because they are morally righteous, even though they ruin someone's life largely out of spite and vengeance. They kinda dropped the ball with the dispositions, and should probably have had a lot tighter guidelines over what should constitute each of them, and hired the job out to a high-functioning autistic guy with antisocial personality disorder, to make it as impassionately applied as possible. Rational is another one that appears to be applied seemingly randomly. If you value benevolence above all else, yes, you will be a hypocrite. Nobody ever said you couldn't be both. There's a lot of situations in the game where you'll have the opportunity to do benevolent things that has nothing to do with doing what is right or wrong from a legal or socially acceptable perspective. The only sad thing is that if you always and forever go for benevolence, it never really comes back to haunt you, even though it absolutely should, imo. The game is already way too black and white in most regards.

They do have all the power of gods, the difference is they are kith-made. They exist, they are real. Their origins are not exactly what the people think to be but that doesn't make their power anything lesser. Yes it does. Gods are implicitly creators or progenitors; Says who? I mean in our world sure, you are right. But we are in a fantasty setting. Here anything is possible and it doesn't matter that much to the average Eder. It's an interesting subject for the intelectuals of Eora but only that. I still don't know how that does their power any lesser? Look at what Magran did with Eothas, or Ondra and Abydon. Their power is immense and vastly beyond anything simple Kith can achive. Even archmages such as Llengrath or Concelhaut don't come anything close to the power of the gods. They're not beyond anything kith can achieve. They literally are something kith achieved. By literally sacrificing a civilization's worth of souls and fuse them together into a handful of personas. So I mean, yeah, you're not wrong. But for all intents and purposes, Zared is still right.

Modders have had their hands on the game since release. This "mods will fix it" attitude prolific in the market needs to die. There's a ton of things mods simply cannot do, depending on a game, and PoE is horrific to work with from a modding perspective. It's a far cry from "It's not made for it, but it's pretty damn doable in some regards" nature of the IE games, and well into the territory of "Oh no, **** that."

When I see people reading way too much into a comment, I must stress that practically all interviews are edited, especially if it happened in person or in conversation. There are nuances in a conversation that does not translate well to text, with all the uhms and aahs and buts. And if it's not, the one being interviewed has an endless opportunity to be as diplomatic or as restrictive in giving out what they want as they want, which presents the issue of trying to make things sound good, or better than they are. Or even intentionally misleading. That being said, I am sad to hear that Pillars of Eternity is over. I realize that it was fruitless, but I was still holding on to the sliver of hope that there would at some point be a narrative pass, creating somewhat of an enhanced edition/director's cut. A definitive version of the game, without the many small oddities that stick out like sore thumbs, to take the game from 'good' to 'great', from "the best we've got at the moment" to "among the best there's been". This caught my attention, though: Oh Sawyer. Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer. What are we ever to do with you?

I had just assumed that certain effects or weapons took precedence. I really liked the fact that Purgatory didn't have a visual effect.

He got better.

Now that. That is a nice portrait.

What does the polish description say, then? How was ""Find the sun-kissed hillocks where the dead folk sleep. Rest beside their wasting flesh; inspect what dreams you reap." translated without using some form of "rest" or "sleep" or variation thereof?

It just occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, it's just a matter of someone not thinking hard enough about it, or no-one ever reporting it. It's been discussed before, but always as an oddity, not as a bug. So I thought we could actually use a report on it. This is a link to another thread, with heavy spoilers. Enormous spoilers, in fact, nobody go there if you haven't completely finished the game. The potential bug is really similar to the well-known Sagani bug, where Sagani talks about a name that she (or anyone in the group) should not know yet. But is it a bug? I'm not sure that it is. It's not really a faulty trigger, as much as faulty writing, and strings would actually have to be re-written, and the trigger moved to later in the game, somewhere else. Either way, I really think that someone should take a look at it and make the call. This goes beyond a narrative gripe or odd leap of logic, I think.

They do have all the power of gods, the difference is they are kith-made. They exist, they are real. Their origins are not exactly what the people think to be but that doesn't make their power anything lesser. Yes it does. Gods are implicitly creators or progenitors; the POE "gods" are just freakish weird kings with magic powers who were bolted onto existing systems. Think of it like the difference between Obsidian making an isometric CRPG and them claiming to have invented the genre. Potatoe Potatoe. In most mythologies, gods have been created by something or someone in some way, often by some other primordial or godlike force, but in fantasy settings, there is no shortage of man-made gods of varying scope or design. If we want to get really technical, gods are simply supreme beings presiding over some (or all) portion(s) of worldly affairs, or according to some particular conception. At it's most base definition it can be as small as a even an image of a deity, an idol, or any deified person or object. Gods are gods because of what they are, not how they came to be or how they got there. I'm not saying that the distinction is irrelevant, though. There's some startling implications for the people living within the world, and whether the gods are "true" gods or not. It's a warranted discussion, but objectively speaking, it's not inherently wrong to say that they're still gods or that they're not gods just because they're man-made. The comparison between Obsidian making an isometric CRPG and them claiming to have invented the genre isn't apt, because most deities in most concepts, whether real-life abrahamic or pagan mythologies or flat-out man-made fantasy settings, didn't create the world; in most, maybe one or two gods or other primordial forces (commonly one of each, somehow) created the world, and then the other gods popped up through various means. Something that I didn't see brought up in the thread was why Engwith created the gods. Engwith was, if I remember correctly, a deeply religious society that was technologically backwards but mystically and magically gifted, exploring the depths and structures of the souls and the immaterial universe, ultimately questing towards the great wheel, exploring the origin of the gods and trying to peer beyond the veil. And what they saw was nothing. No gods, no master-mind, no origin of the souls. In deep religious crisis, they saw no hope or meaning to the universe, so they created their own gods, to give purpose to creation. It's entirely possible, likely even probable, that there is no such thing as a "true" god in the setting. If there is, not even the "false" gods born of the Engwithan sacrifice have seen or felt it. And even this the children of Engwith tainted with their petty squabbles; the schemings of Woedica, the destruction of Abydon and his implied subsequent servitude to Magran, the Saint's War, etc. We don't know for absolute certainty that Eothas is dead, but it's clear that the other gods have no clue (or claim to have no clue) if he's truly dead or not, and it's not entirely clear why Eothas manifested as Gaun through Waidwen and marched on the Dyrwoods. If the implication that it was done to stop Woedica's and Thaos' designs before they bore fruit, designs that Woedica was expressly forbidden from pursuing for good reason, and Magran was actually working with Woedica (which I think is utter horse**** and the very idea of which is poorly conveyed to the player at best), I'm surprised all the other gods aren't completely and utterly losing their **** against Woedica and Magran at this point, seeing as how Eothas' war was warranted (if ill-conceived) and Magran may have literally murderkilled one of them, proving that even though they are godlike beings that have lived for millennia, they are vulnerable. Assuming that all the implications made in the game (whether poorly conveyed or not) are true, it's downright odd that Hylea and Berath aren't actively trying to lead a murdercrusade against Magran, and that Skaen and Galawain hasn't started stab-eating everything and everyone within reach that is related to Woedica. Personally, I like the idea that Magran was an unwitting accomplice to Woedica's designs, rather than an active pawn, which some have guessed at, but that hasn't even been hinted on at all within the game, even though it's a completely reasonable stance. The gist of it is that Magran did not support Eothas' not because she supported Woedica, but because she did not believe Eothas' claims, or in the Leaden Key/Thaos conspiracy/scheme. Magran then opposed Eothas entirely for her own reasons, seeing the events in Readceras as the creation of an unsanctioned, unjust theocracy, and the attack on Dyrwood as a way to expand his domain and sphere of complete influence. This creates the awkward situation where the goddess of war, strategy and tactics opposes a war, whereas the god of redemption and mercy spearheads a war of conquest. This also transforms that silence of Magran and the judgement of Durance to a silence of shame and regret over killing a brother, rather than the act of a petty and cruel w**** discarding her toy after breaking it. And I think that even though much of this are reasonable leaps of logic based on what is presented in the game, they're not actually conclusions that are presented within the game very well, if at all. The player can guess at it, but the characters appear completely oblivious. This is what aggravates me the most about the writing of the end of Durance's questline. I can easily rationalize the actions of Magran, which could arguably soften the heart of Durance in his own judgement of his shamed deity, but instead my character has to make tremendous leaps in logics based on facts that aren't remotely presented within the game itself. It's jarring and - honestly - mildly upsetting, because of how good the writing of the character was up until that point. Sorry if that got longer than I expected. Edit: Not even in our own world, assuming we label "real" mythology somehow higher than any other "fantasy". In Greek mythology, the world was created by primordial forces, from Chaos, from which Death, Darkness and Love emerged, the latter from which Love emerged, eventually creating Gaia, the Earth, which gave birth to the Sky, Uranus. From this collective concepts and beings kept emerging for various reasons, and eventually Gaia and Uranus gave birth to the cyclops, the cthonic horrors that were the hecatoncheires, and all the titans. Only from the titans did the classical gods of greek antiquity emerge and became the gods of man. It's a whole narrative. Most other myths are vaguely similar in this. It's practically only in semitic, abrahamic myth where god is singular, truly omnipotent, omniscient, and eternally immortal and indestructable as a readily identifiable persona, separate from human (or humanizing) aspects. Odin didn't create the cosmos, and he had to seek knowledge at the spring-well of wisdom, sacrificing his eye for a measure of omniscience. The weapons and powers of the gods of Europe were created by cunning dwarves, forged the marred and physically disabled Heiphastos, or attained through other means; no god could be considered truly omnipotent. Baldr was killed by an arrow of mistletoe, and many supposed gods of various mythologies die, sometimes repeatedly. The idea that gods created the world, that they are omniscient, omnipresent, immortal, infallible, inherently inhuman but still readily personified, are practically an abrahamic idea, and only truly present - as far as I'm aware - within the religious myths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In practically any pagan or polytheistic context, deities are representatives of man, archetypes, or aspects of nature or the world, intended to teach or inspire in one way or another. Again, there's a good argument as to whether the gods of Engwith are "true" gods or not, but for all intents and purposes, especially in the context of the universe, they are gods, manufactured or otherwise. The fact that they can be killed, that they are petty, vindictive little ****wits, or that they did not create the world themselves are all indicators that they are, if anything, just another pantheon, far more common than the idea of the opposite state of affairs.

It's not foreshadowing, though. He flat-out states it as a matter-of-fact as if you've had it confirmed. If he was going "Could it be that..." or "This has some startling implications, that maybe..." I think that nobody would've had a problem with it. As it is now, it largely comes off as nonsense. He literally says "That reminds me of something else the delemgan said. About the gods not being real." The delemgan literally never says that. He could've said that he had concluded that the gods may not be what we think they are, or speak of his own conclusions regarding what has been said, but he doesn't. He says we were told the gods weren't real, long before we know for a fact that the gods aren't real. This is arguably worse than the old bug where Sagani says the name of Thaos long before you learn the name.

This. So much ****ing this. The whole Magran-was-working-with-Woedica felt like a completely random thing to me when it came up, and you get stuck in a conversation loop with Durance with only one way out: either you convince him Magran was working with Woedica, which feels like complete and utter nonsense, given what we've heard in game up until that point (or any other point, really), or the quest remains unresolved. It makes it feel like there's a GM sitting there, telling you "No, you can't do that." like the worst kind of railroading, and then flat-out telling you what was going on in the background, even though the GM in no way conveyed that to the player in any actual way. I was a huge fan of Durance up until that point, and it just sorta ruined everything for me. No option to reaffirm his faith, no option to go for anything less extreme, just huge, nonsensical leaps in logic in a completely railroaded conversation, in a quest that can only be resolved one way. Sometimes PoE shines, but a few times thoughout the game - being a Priest/ess of Eothas at the Temple of Eothas, or speaking with Durance as one, not being able to send the lord's niece back to the lord in Dyrford, Bleak Walkers just being blackguards-by-any-other-name after all, the fact that you *must* oppose Raedric, the fampyr woman at Heritage Hill being as railroad-y as can be, and the thing with Aloth just suddenly talking about things that haven't been said at all yet (and won't be confirmed for quite some time), and more - the game just flat-out fails horrifically. I've been asking for a narrative/reactivity pass since day 1, and it's safe to assume that there's just not going to be one. If there was going to be such a patch, it probably would've been long before DLC #2.

Awww. Back to back-row casting and never using Spiritshift, Hiravias. Can I assume that the description was also amended?

The most notable weirdness as far as I'm concerned is that if you cooperate with the Adra Dragon at the bottom of Caed Nua, it keeps mentioning how you've gotten an ally and that's why you did it and so on and so forth. But nothing comes of it, not even at the Battle of Yenwood. Odd as all hell, honestly. I was totally expecting her to be counted as a special ally.

What?

On the issue of Abydon's body, it is my understanding that the prevailing mythology (whether true or not in relation to the gods' true history) is that Magran helped Abydon create a new form for himself, and has been closely aligned with (some would likely say subservient to) Magran ever since. This is all of course quite debatable, as it posits the question whether the gods have physical bodies at all. Everything we know suggests that they don't, but at the same time, it is obvious that this embodiment of Abydon is as an important part to the mythology or the "real" history behind the mythology as the story of the burning of Woedica, physically, literally, scarring her forever.

Also, as dodgy as the mod is right now, with broken features, the IE Mod supports Loot Shuffling, and it works in v3.01. The reason I'm using this is because I feel like I'm constantly finding Deflection and Resistance items, like they're on a roll through the random loot table in relation to the world, and I'm in the middle of the wave.

No way, no how. It's the fact that Durance has done all these things yet had more or less good reasons for doing so that makes him a good character. The only objectively evil thing about Durance is the writing towards the end of the game. They should've just let Avellone do his thang.

It's annoying as hell having the CNPC:s stuck at their post-1.03 scores.

I can confirm that there's absolutely things you can't disarm at Mechanics 13. I'd aim for 16 modded, really. Anything above that is going to be almost impossible to get on average anyway. That's 16 with gloves, but without the scroll.