Clawdius_Talonious

I had one anger a conviction and a regret IIRC and I was able to reconcile and get past some of the fight at the end. I never fought anyone in the towers, I think you're supposed to avoid the most negative emotions you can get out of them, but you can have at least one anger or other negative emotion and still get more than just a fight at the end.

When I read the thread title I was thinking "So, how would that work? You fight the boss in the tutorial section? Get KO'd and play the rest of the game in a series of disjointed memory-dreams? How would the consequences be for the players actions?" But sadly, this wasn't anywhere nearly as interesting an idea as I was hoping for. I'd play a Pillars Prequel, but I'd much rather it be set in Engwith, or pre-Engwith even but at that point it's more the bestiary and I guess rudimentary landmasses than it is anything else in the setting (I mean, the gods may have shaped some of the landscape, but it seems like mostly they don't have the power to e.g. cause magma to well up in ancient places with machinery they never want found, or else why didn't they just do that?) So I guess that's kind of like saying I'll probably buy any RPG like this that Obsidian makes.

Edit: With the response of Kindoffer I was able to pull all of my saves from August out of the directory and get one of the last two characters into the BoW content. By trying my saves from the first character to go through BoW being back in the save directory (but all others in a temp directory) and reloading the pre-August save from the other character that was displaying all quests from Beast of Winter as complete I was able to get a game state where they were also able to travel to Harbinger's Watch and progress Beast of Winter. I still have no idea what on earth the game looks at any saves that aren't loaded for, the saves of other characters to my mind shouldn't cause an issue like this, but since this fix works clearly that's the culprit. I never did find a single save I could use to drop into the save directory that would recreate this issue by itself. That said, my entire directory does it, and I could probably pretty easily narrow it down to e.g. two characters entire save logs if need be... But I've gotten the six characters from before August into the content and I'm kind of tired of fooling with it now. If my saves would somehow be useful let me know, but otherwise I'm just going to hope Obsidian doesn't need me to upload several hundred megs of saves I don't feel like going through (it doesn't help that I seemed to have to exit the entire game to get added saves to register necessitating checking for one corrupting save being launching and closing the game over and over.) So, on the repro on this I'm a little flummoxed TBH. I loaded a save I had started not too long ago, after having run through the entirety of Beast of Winter on my first or who I think of as my "main" character and didn't even consider looking at my quest log for Beast of Winter stuff. At any rate, on my second character, loading the quicksave that was his latest I charged on in and saw... Vatnir wouldn't talk to me, he just had some barks about his bandages or some such. It would load the little semi-cutscene sort of, the camera would move, and then a Vatnir bark. Looking into it further, after a number of hours on this character, I realized that I had two quests that were shown as "completed" in the Beast of Winter log, the two from the title To Rise and Decline and An Honored Guest were both showing as complete before I ever was able to even talk to Vatnir. I can't really say or imagine why exactly this character reports as having completed these quests. Hell, looking at all my other characters and then going back to the first to exhibit noticeable weirdness, he now showed -every- quest I'm aware of in The Beast of Winter having been completed, despite the fact that he was never able to even pick up Vatnir. Looking into things beyond these two characters I see they all have The Higher Ups as a sidequest despite having never been to Harbinger's Rest (having just been loading pre-endgame saves to examine the state of things after launch). And of course, as I mentioned, my character whose quest history is acting even more strangely than acquiring quests he's never had (as every character of mine has done with The Higher Ups) now reports every single quest in The Beast of Winter as having been completed despite the fact that he's level 9, and I'm just loading saves from before TBoW launched. I guess I never bothered to make him a permanent save, just going off of quicksaves and autosaves on him, because I've got several autosaves and the quick save that were there before TBoW launched, new autosaves and quicksaves started to be generated thankfully for me to explore but he's just reporting that I've completed every quest in TBoW now as far back as I can see... I tried to attach a save, but since the max file size is 1mb and the save is more like 3mb I couldn't just attach it here. If you need me to upload the ... most afflicted save, I can put it on whatever site you recommend. As I stated, there is a save game now for which all of the quest completions are true, I did all the Beast of Winter stuff on a level 20 before loading up my level 9 to check it out on Hard difficulty at a low level and encountering what I thought was a bug just in the scripting of Vatnir that turned out to be... some sort of quest rot is the best way I can describe it, apparently as I played him and got him a few levels elsewhere (thinking I might have gotten the missive in error and just needed to level a bit and go back to have the script play out properly) he was apparently getting quests and having them flag as completed at this point? I really don't think that was the case, the crazy thing is these saves weren't altered, but on reloading them later instead of just having To Rise and Decline and An Honored Guest showing as complete they all started showing every single quest as complete. I've since tried validating files, and even went to Harbinger's Watch on another character who had The Higher Ups, she got the letter from Vatnir but the quest didn't enter into her journal properly and when she got there he acted the same way just saying "Yes yes I'm here" and "I've got to change these bandages" or some such. I'm more than happy to upload any files, but I am really not sure what I could upload that would be demonstrative of this issue since whatever it is seems to have taken hold and then spread to every file the character had, as well as The Higher Ups being present across every character. Something bled through from my first time through The Beast of Winter maybe? I've got several other characters I can try to run to Harbinger's and see if any of them will be able to trigger Vatnir's dialog properly, as I said it just activates the camera stuff and he says "Yes yes, I'm here" and it is over. I'm not really even sure how this journal stuff ties into it, just that it has exhibited these baffling properties and I'm flummoxed. I'm aware that without some more from me, unless the repro is as easy as "Run a character through TBoW, load a second character in that instance of the game and try to run them to Harbinger's" this one's going to be a hell of a mystery. I'll check back in the morning and upload any saves or anything as required, but I'm really not sure what I can offer since now all of the worst afflicted character's saves have the same exact problem, including every save from before TBoW launched, even though the problem got worse over the course of my leveling the character from 9-11 (going from 2 quests to all of the stuff you do after climbing the cliff as well showing up as completed.) The only other thing I can think to offer is, I loaded a bunch of characters, then loaded the afflicted character and that was when I first noticed that his latest saves (and afterwards all his saves) were also showing up with the same issue. I'd swear that I loaded the pre-DLC (not the autosave named that, just the quicksave that stayed extant once I started making new quicksaves that I initially loaded on that character) save once I saw the quests as flagged complete and I was sure I saw The Beast of Winter heading with no leads under it, so I thought I'd have great before and after saves to upload when I started writing this and as I went to do more thorough investigating things just got worse. I don't have any mods or anything like that, so that's out the window as a potential cause of these baffling issues. I'm more than willing to imagine this is just going to be some crazy super rare issue that is impossible to repro, Rymrgand possessed my saves and brought me some free entropy. If that's the case, I would love some console commands, so I can reset the state of every TBoW quest to the state of having never been accepted if such a thing exists.

* Extremely Detailed Spoiler Warning* I've only found one way to deal with this quest to my satisfaction, and that is to tell him he's a big imp, IIRC a medium tier diplomacy response lets you suggest that you'll ally with Nemnok and he'll let the kid go. At that point you can say "Nah, just kiddin' buddy." and fight Nemnok, without killing the kid. I've never had enough intimidation to intimidate Nemnok, and I've never attempted the quest line without enough diplomacy to finish it this way. That said the first time I did the quest was on a Diplomacy focused character and I had to muddle through it a few times, since I didn't want to kill the kid. As for the fight itself, have everyone stealth on the south bridge just inside the entrance and send in either a pet if you have a ranger, or if you have to a tank. I say the pet, because last I checked when you trigger dialog with a pet they run back to hang out with their master. This makes the fight pull the absolute minimum number of adds, take out the worshipers first because they're really easy to kill and their damage adds up. The other higher level spellcasters, then the tanks, and then the big imp himself. Nemnok will teleport away from you, but if you don't go chasing after him he'll also come right back to you so... you can avoid quite a few naga and ettins in the fight. Even with all of that, I'd recommend being level 15 before trying this fight on normal, and I haven't done it on PotD since the latest rebalance so I can't say quite when you should be ready for it at that level. No matter what, avoiding as many adds as possible is the easy way to win this fight IMO.

I've only ever had the guards attack when I damaged Civilians. I've done that bounty like 5x, but the only time I ever had problems with it was when I had Maia using her quest Arquebus which bounces into civilian NPCs. AOE spells would have this effect as well I'm sure, but I was avoiding those for obvious reasons. Since I had just gotten and equipped that Arquebus, it was the first thing I tried swapping out and I immediately was able to complete this bounty without angering the guards. That said, this was before even the 1.1 patch so things could have changed since I last completed the quest.

I just wish that they had recorded exit dialogs for the psychotic Xoti. Hearing her talk about the darkness inside her is somewhat suspect when the next words out of her mouth are "If you need me I'll be two whoops and a hollar away!"

I don't think so, I never found any way to sell old ships at least. As far as I know, there's nothing in the game that will allow you to sell the ship. It's a shame, because the starting ship should be worth 10k or so which would go a decent bit of the way toward a Junk. Because of the inability to sell the ship, I've upgraded straight to a junk from the starting ship in every game.

To be fair, if Hiravias is his primary example of Orlans, then he was closer to an animal than most. And he may or may not have spent a lot of time actually being an animal around Eder. Obviously that's not the case if the Watcher is an Orlan, and Eder is kind of a racist asshat either way. People don't even have to have fur, and racists equate them with animals, because dehumanizing (dekithizing?) crap is par for that particular course... Still, Hiravias was an animal, and frankly depending on how your Serafen was spec'd a Barbarian/Pirate isn't going to necessarily be enough to change Eder's mind by himself. I'd expect that Eder and Mirke would have gotten along [had they been real people or Mirke gotten the full companion treatment]. Certainly I always thought of Eder himself as a druggie, at the very least I have given him the necklace that makes you wake up with Whiteleaf symptoms in every playthrough (not to wear, just to hold onto because I know he loves him some whiteleaf). Personally I like that the companions in Pillars of Eternity all have flawed personalities, and Deadfire is the same way (and accentuates old companions flaws in a new light.) Xoti is an inexperienced one might say naive and extremely impressionable young woman. Eder is arguably kind of simple, (possibly because he's such) a "fan" of Whiteleaf and a racist (although not a ... hylbyly?) yokel. Serafen and Mirke are pirates. Maya is ... willing to follow orders for a government whose actions are questionable. Pallegina is kind of a bitch to people who don't think the gods are ****, and she's far too willing to carry out orders on behalf of people who may have wronged her and have questionable motives. Tenahu is obviously egocentric and a hedonist, unsure of how he wants to use his power (full of himself, but oddly reticent to live up to his potential on his own.) Aloth is not good at being self-motivating, but he took a job that required more than he could give it on his own, and he was kind of a shady character in the first game. Even the sidekicks are kind of a bunch of misfits, found in the ocean, a soulless weirdo, (a pirate, I mentionedalready/only in DLC) and a... massage parlor employee? I never really got Konstanten because I never really kept him in my party to hear/see his barks and responses to things. Personally if I was the Watcher on the one character I kept her in (which I started and finished post-release of PoE2) I'd have treated Vela like a surrogate daughter or at least a much younger sibling. Honestly it never even occurred to me that I could have kept her, and I saw pre-release that it was an option but my characters all kind of had personalities from PoE1 so I didn't want to just go back and keep her even if such a thing could have been done easily in another save... My point is, my only Watcher who has her to notice anything about her is a kind of odd character. I wish Vela could have gotten (or even, would get eventually) some serious reactivity based on your actions in Pillars of Eternity. FFS, I'd have been -super- happy if Berath asked people who kept Vela "Do you remember the child you adopted?" and let me say "Her? I pawned her for armor polish money, I always need more armor polish!" Or, of course, sane things a sane person might have said about a child they kept. Or things a slaver-type might have said about their property I guess? They had such a nice bit of immediate backstory-filling in Pillars of Eternity with Calisca that seeing something like that would have been cool for PoE2's PoE1 reactivity IMO. It would be like several different sets of lines for the VA and writer of Vela, but I'd have loved to see that. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go pickpocket a child and replace her ripplesponge with some kind of vegetable. I've also got an old man to fire... out of a cannon.

I responded to the questionnaire saying that I really liked the endless paths of Caed Nua, in particular the fact that you likely had to revisit the location as you progressed, which created a nice gameplay loop. I'd have really liked it if they could have crammed at least another few layers under Nekataka, maybe a key or two scattered on other islands, temples to more deities (possibly even Eothas?) that could have been an interesting way to tie an element of that massive dungeon into PoE2. That said, the 15 levels felt at times like they were just padded out, there because they were a stretch goal. Fifteen levels was a bit much, and there was no need for that level of depth in any one dungeon. A DLC that added a massive dungeon with reasons to encounter it early and want to return would be a welcome thing, but given the nature of the DLCs I don't think we'll see it. If there was a fourth DLC that added something of that nature I'd enjoy it, but it would be hard to find a place where it fit naturally in the progression and you'd run across it in a way that didn't seem odd. Level scaling could help, but likely not entirely alleviate that issue. Of course, as a fan of the mega-dungeon, I'd buyit and go there even if I had to sail to The Vailian Republics.

If you sneak down to the southeast from the old city, all the way east (it turns north at the end) there's a rowboat that will take you to Queen's Berth. *Whoops, didn't see that in the replies but it was in the Op. I didn't have any problem getting past Mad Morena's crew, the water shapers saw me and didn't attack. That said, I had started the quest from Dario, even though I hadn't picked up the okay to head into the Old City and went down the lift. Also, it was 1.0, so maybe patches changed something?

I've pushed her to the dark, and had her release the souls into an adra pillar, but she's still talking about crazy dreams and waking me up staring at me with her sickle in hand an such. Threshing Aura is so much better than the light of the dawnstar upgrade that it's kind of frustrating that you have to basically drive her crazy to get it. I mean, you can get over 20% damage increase, party wide, that adds up big time. The downside is you have a psycho deathpriestess...

Alright, thanks for the suggestion, went ahead and sent the save over.

So, I managed to deliver Maia's messages on a character who was right up to the end of the game on a Vallian playthrough. Knowing that Maia wouldn't like the next mission the Valians sent me on, I brought her back to the Brass Citadel and she left the party for a few days. I blew the powderhouse, and sailed off into the sunset. Maia did return, and she stays with my party, but she "wants to talk" and yet now when I click on her she just glares at me. I'm not sure that I expected to preserve Maia's relationship with the watcher or anything, but I know that this is some kind of bug. She'll even stay allied to me when I go to the Brass Citadel and the people there start openly attacking me as revenge for the powderhouse (the director said he had an alibi for me, why does everyone just know I was the culprit when someone else was confessing in open court? But that's more a writing oddity) I think that should provide a simple solid repro, but if I need to attach a save I can, but I'll have to do it elsewhere because the file is 4.14mb.

I won't believe that they've voiced every single potential NPC bark in the game until I hear it for myself. Yes, a shopkeeper you do business with will have her lines voiced. The kids chasing a piece of poo down the gutter with their poo-sticks probably won't be. There could be exceptions, but those tend to be clues.

Sometimes I do, once I've fully explored the companion characters in a game like this. I recreated my D&D party as best as possible in Pillars for an early playthrough. The companions are often the most memorable and enjoyable part of a game of this nature, but after I have fully explored most or all of the conversation options with them, companions are more about combat strategies. I don't tend to invest most of the characters with personalities, although with my D&D party I did try to imagine how we might deal with events and afterward I felt like I preferred our Halfling as an Orlan.

I'll be taking level scaling everywhere my first playthrough. I like to go on jaunts and explore, and will tend to be overleveled for things after bashing my face into ridiculously difficult content. Since the level scaling will only scale things up, I don't have any problem with it. I may wind up plowing through trickier fights to get worse loot, but I usually enjoy that more than smashing a significant amount of enemies to death with single hits and watching them explode into gibs.

I'd like to see this done, schedules that may not be able to be easily amended at this point are likely in place for some, so given that the majority of systems for key distribution and the like are already in place I don't see any harm in the idea. Those who backed at higher tiers hopefully did so in order to have their feedback incorporated for the release of the game, and that won't be changed if more people are given access to the backer beta. If it was likely to require much in the way of work from people at Obsidian that might be better spent elsewhere, I might feel otherwise. Given the relatively short notice, it would be nice of Obsidian to do this. That being said, Universim and most other Kickstarter projects that extended early access to all backers (at least, those that I've backed personally and thus followed) had already slipped well beyond the initial launch window when they decided to do so. Since that's not the case here, I really only think that it would be nice because of the nature of having announced an exact date for release. If the folks at Harebrained Schemes had said that Battletech (a game I anticipate very nearly as much as Pillars 2 mind you) had release delayed from April to May, it wouldn't have felt like as much of a loss as Pillars 2 going from April 3rd to May 8th, if that makes sense? Or even if it doesn't, how things 'feel' isn't always about logic. Pillars 2 slipped from Q1 to Q2, and despite it being 'just a month' and despite my having felt like the initial announcement of April 3rd was considerably sooner than I expected it to be, it seems like an expansion of access to the backer beta would be a nice way to make up for any inconvenience it may have caused without being too much work for the fine folks at Obsidian.

While I'll admit that I've never been the biggest fan of romances in games, I am inclined to agree with Obsidian that it takes a lot of resources invested into it (time and trouble, at the very least) to make it fit seamlessly into a game. I imagine that a great amount of effort has been put into companions already, shoehorning romance in now doesn't seem like it would be an option.

Monks sound phenomenal, I can hardly wait to play a Godlike Monk.

It sounds as though they've already done a lot of the early work for fleshing out the world, if Obsidian needs more time I'm sure they'll take it, I personally am alright with trusting their judgement in how long something like this will take. They know better than I do exactly what goes into RPG development. Just because a lot of games are made on a five year cycle doesn't mean that a lot of what they are doing isn't revamping old content or iterating based on feedback from QA. With the community so close to this project I imagine that Obsidian will have a better grasp on what needs to be done than if there was a publisher between them and their market. Publishers often make changes to things in the interest of "streamlining". There is also the fact that I don't believe Project Eternity is going the route of full voice acting etc, which takes a considerable amount of time to introduce and test. While it isn't uncommon for a "modern" RPG to take five years, a "retro" RPG could feasibly be developed in less time, especially by an experienced team. Mind you, at the time Fallout, Baulders Gate etc. were all modern for their era.

I keep seeing people ask for a Planescape: Torment sequel. Planescape is a huge Dungeons and Dragons world, Torment was the first game in that universe these people had to work on. However, they could much more easily work on a Planescape based game. Planescape might cost them some money, but the Torment license belongs to the publishers. However I really do feel that it would be a great idea for them to visit a world that isn't licensed by any current development operation.

The Planescape universe isn't part of the Torment theme. They could make a Planescape based game, for a lot less money than a followup to Torment. As for a remaster of the game, you might consider looking at GOG (good old games) for the first version of PS:T, and there is a nice widescreen/high resolution mod available. I use a 42" TV as my monitor, but I've had it for a number of years, so it only uses 1360x768 resolution. The game was beautiful, at the original vertical resolution. There are higher resolutions available, but 2D art scales much better than 3D. Quake III looks alright, but it doesn't really scale too well over time. As a 2D game, Planescape will be just as attractive as it ever was, in twenty years. With a tablet, it will never look any better than it does now, and is actually quite playable on a tablet. While I know I showed the game to my nephew, and he skipped past all the introductory text, and said "this game is boring" and I had to inform him he effectively just flipped through a book and called it boring.

Fallout had ropes as an item to acquire through merchants, and the only time you were informed you needed them is if you didn't have one (or did, but didn't use it) and came to a point where it was a required item to proceed. I imagine that they aren't the sort of developers who would make handholding the priority over player immersion. If you have an amount of 300-400k, you can receive a significant loan with that as collateral. This will provide -much- lower interest rates than if you used any other form of collateral. Often times they look at a 20% down loan as an investment, and they will finance you for much more reasonable rates.

Personally, even though I advocated the use of a series that hasn't ever had any CRPGs based on it, I imagine that any original IP created by Obsidian would be amazing. Their writing has really impressed me over the years, they're some of the most creative developers out there IMHO. The one failing, to me, is caused by deadlines. Being able to have a Kickstarter project, where they control the release schedule, and their players are able to contribute over the course of the project. While I suggested the Mistborn universe, because I read where Chris (IIRC) said that they like working in established universes, because it allows them to focus entirely on the story, rather than developing a world... I think we should avoid suggesting worlds that are licensed by other companies. Fallout, Arcanum, the Warhammer universe... They're all licensed by other companies. I'm not familiar with some of the other worlds suggested, but I think that worlds that haven't been visited in the form of a CRPG should really be our focus if we're not advocating them creating a world.

I would love to see another G.U.R.P.S. style Isometric RPG, but I've always wanted a few things that are more viable now than they have been in the past. I would love to see the ability to burn down wooden structures, or open a hole in a wall with a sledge hammer. I realize that this sort of dynamic destruction would have been difficult to implement in the past, but with Phys-X that sort of possibility is more realistic. It has always confounded me that I can, perhaps break open a chest, and if I'm extremely fortunate a door, but a wooden wall provides some immutable obstacle to my progress. The ability to open unlocked windows, break locked windows, and use them as entrances/exits to buildings would also be quite useful. I've often wondered why it is impossible to scramble over some smaller debris present in isometric games. I realize that from an artistic standpoint debris can be a nice way to break up the monotony of yet another wall, and that from a level design standpoint it's important to be able to wall of some locations, but it can sometimes be quite frustrating to the player. I'd also like to see the ability to roll explosives (grenades in a more modern world, less sophisticated devices in other universes) down staircases. I would love to be able to roll a tear gas grenade or hurl a flask of noxious cloud producing liquid down a staircase into an entrenched foe. I would like to see ice, muck, and other types of terrain that affect footing. Being able to cross a frozen lake, and being able to do it without falling are two different things. Wading through the muck in plate or combat armor alike becomes quite tedious and will slow your progress immensely. As such, they can be quite useful as parts of strategic ambush points. Personally, I know this is a pipe dream, but I would really love to see a game set in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn universe. Preferably in the same time period as The Alloy of Law. It's a steampunk sort of world, where a unique form of magic coexists with rudimentary technology, but without the whole magic vs tech concerns that were present in Arcanum.