crawlkill

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but the logic of it shook my experience of the last few hours of the game enough that I feel like I should report it. I'd been planning on siding with the Huana, and got everything set up with them--taken down the gunpowder storehouse, secured the queen's alliance with the isolationist/militant tribe. I then set about clearing up unfinished business in the Deadfire. I visited Dunnage and massacred its leadership, then went down to Deadlight and took a cruise back to Dunnage with the new blood's leader. She told me how to summon the Hangman. I wanted to take down that threat, so I went out to sea and took her down. I then went back to Dunnage and promptly slaughtered the **** out of the new leadership--I wasn't interested in siding with the pirates, I just wanted the Hangman off the table, so I could return that sword to the deathguard under Berath's temple and otherwise make the Deadfire safer. I then spent the next three or four real-life hours scouring the map for all of the many side-things I hadn't done. I cleaned out a lot of temples, named a lot of islands, downed a lot of bounties. Then I noticed that Tekēhu had something to say--and he told me that he was surprised I'd allied with the pirates against the Huana? This freaked me out, because my last save pre-Hangman was from hours back. I killed the hell out of those pirates' leaders, and I didn't even engage with their endgame stuff until I'd already locked in all of the Huana endgame requirements. I made for the final island and saw that, yeah, it was Principi ships that showed up to defend me. When I reverted to my save before I took down the Hangman and went to the endgame directly from there--less many hours of side content completed--I got the Huana fleet, like I'd expected. So what's the deal here? It seems like there's no way to take down the Hangman without locking yourself into the pirate ending, even if you annihilate the leaders of both Principi factions along the way? The game didn't communicate this well at all--if I hadn't spoken to Tekēhu, I would probably have put another five hours into finishing off the whole map before realizing that I'd been force-aligned with the pirates because I...uh...took some advice from one then killed her? This seems like a continuity error--at the very least, it seems like if I've fulfilled conditions for both Principi and Huana alignment I could get to explicitly declare which one I want to side with, no? It really sucked to lose all that time I'd invested doing side content to revert to an older save where I could actually side with the faction I'd been pitching for the whole game and hadn't mass murdered.

I have not been able to get that request on a stream that David Warner voice Eothas out of my mind if I remember right Josh just said "hm, not sure what David Warner is up to these days" give me back my Irenicus I need him yknow the real thing I miss from Baldur's Gates 1 and 2, voicewise, was the variety and character of right-click/initiate conversation generic lines from different types of NPC. the jovial "I can break an arm or a leg for a copper or two" from the toughs, the comically harsh priests who wailed KNEEL. AND. REPENT., the siege tank guards who WERE the law and who SERVED the FLA-MING FIST. those felt like they got a lot of attention both from writers and in the studio, and they helped the world lively and full of many different sorts of people.

I may have been a good boy and encouraged her to spare her target during her personal quest, and I'm a little distressed at how bleak her ending was. I fished around in my old saves until I found one where the quest was incomplete, finished it with the murderin', then copied the flags with the word "Devil"'s states into my pre-endgame file (the only difference was that it set n_devil_quest_state to 3, rather than 2, which it is if you spare the guy). This didn't change what my quest log showed I'd decided or the final outcome, though. She still went around murderin' and then got pulled apart. Any idea if I can do anything to tweak this save? It's my only negative outcome in the game! I'd like my Watcher to bring positive memories of her fate into PoE 2 or whatever, in case it should come up. Poor Matias doesn't want to remember her as an angry blender.

THANK YOU. I finally finished the game after never mustering the energy (and I was a backer, too!) and did E V E R Y T H I N G, really wrangling for an optimistic ending. was super bummed to find I couldn't get the golden ending for Stalwart because I'd spoken up for animancy or something? this worked great, although when I set the "or" I got kicked out after the adventure scene at the crystal to the entrance of the zone without talking to the Eyeless. changed the or back to an and and it all went great. ...now maybe I need to change the Devil's personal quest state and pretend I let her murder that dude...

hm. I have trouble doing what you do--composing a character's narrative internally, without a game's having the systems to back it up. I mean, in a tabletop setting I could handle it, because the GM could just make whatever little situational alterations would be necessary for me to be a faulty android. and I guess maybe in a non-dialoguetree game like Wasteland it's a little easier to visualize, 'cause people aren't reacting to you as interactively as they are in, say, Fallout. but I think in a game with dialogue options and tailored replies it becomes a lot harder to sort of fly with your characters in your own mind. it's part of the reason they didn't include wookies and other stranger species as PC options in Old Republic, right? you get to a situation where people wouldn't be reacting to you in the same way, and you're not quite sure what to make of the fact that the Sith is just totally cool with elevating an ithorian to the Sith Concil or whatever. as to cryptic skills--well. I'm a pragmatist in that respect, and I hate missing out on things just 'cause I didn't know about them. it's certainly cool to have the hidden **** you come across tucked away in the stranger corners of the wastes and then have that hidden **** turn out to have some value to you later, but there's the ROI question--how many players will just never hear about it? still, maybe this is just a case of these things being handled heavy-handedly by a gaming industry two decades and more younger than ours is today, and maybe that kind of cryptitude can be handled better by keen and cunning men of good faith now than it was then. I'm eager to find out, for sure, and I almost think I'd rather see it tried and done imperfectly than have it omitted from the start.