The Sharmat

A reactive soundtrack would help with that too. Pillars 1 didn't even really have anything like "boss" music. Could also go the Dark Souls route I guess, where no music is the default and music is only for hubs and very important fights. But that'd be a big departure.

White March had some very challenging encounters I found, especially upscaled. Hopefully there will be more like that in Deadfire. Josh Sawyer has claimed on twitter that PotD is tougher than in Pillars 1 but at the same time that veteran may be too easy for a Pillars 1 veteran. So we'll see.

That would definitely have eased the way. Slicken'd it, if you will.

If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Still not sure if those are the worst sex scenes ever or the *BEST* sex scenes ever.Does the Bastila kissy-kissy scene from KotOR count? Cuz if so, I think it gets to be the worst. "Shut up and kiss me you babbling fool." And people still think new Bioware writes worse dialogue than old Bioware. Still, most awkward sex scene in gaming has to be the Dragon Age Origins one.

Real men worship the whore.

The character in your avatar is wearing nothing but that cloth wrapped around his face, you know. Raziel goes full frontal at all times.So you suggest I change my avatar before commenting?I think he was trying to downlow tell you that your hypocrisy is showing.Except there's no hypocrisy. People are talking about human nudity specifically and Raziel the reaver isn't human. Or maybe I'm missing the sarcasm. How could you profane a priest by turning him into a eunuch?

The character in your avatar is wearing nothing but that cloth wrapped around his face, you know. Raziel goes full frontal at all times.

There's an unwritten premise here: attractive young female nudity sells. Having a bunch of fat old naked men (a pretty common sight in bath houses) in your game doesn't boost sales. But honestly, even if Obsidian did fill the Deadfire archipelago with nubile and naked young women I doubt it'd have much of an impact on sales. Third person isometric nudity isn't much of a selling point in a world with games like the Witcher 3. Hey now, Witcher 3 taxed you heavily for its attractive young female nudes with stuff like nearly naked Dijkstra and that one chick's naked granny.

They'll likely be the best 2d isometric butts ever rendered though. Eat your heart out, Diablo 2 Amazon.

Yeah I meant a single room clearing spell. Spamming Ninagauth's various direct damage spells will do that but it will take chain casting.

Just hire Steve Blum for all male characters and Jennifer Hale for all female ones if we're going that route. I guess in a pinch Laura Bailey could be substituted for Hale since she's kind of typecast as Femshep these days. Come to think of it, Blum has been typecast as Spike for 20 some years so replace him with Nolan North or something.

I guess I don't consider spamming nuking. That's more like a machine gun than a nuke to me. Still powerful I suppose, just not what I thought they were aiming for; particularly in Deadfire where casting is much slower?

I can only assume Pillars didn't do it because the voice cast was very small and had lots of re-used actors.

Given what we know after end game, I don't know that we should say Thaos is Woedican. Rather, it might be more accurate to say that Woedica is Thaosian.

I found nukers to be fairly ineffective in PoE 1 as well to be honest, but maybe that's because at higher difficulty levels status effects and debuffs mattered way more than direct damage. Has this changed in PoE 2?

I mean there are better stories in RPGs, and worse stories better delivered, but that first glimpse of Thaos in Sun in Shadow during the prologue still gives me chills.

More games should have dynamic music like Nier or Witcher 3 or Banner Saga or the several games I can't remember that did it before then. It's always neat when it actually changes to fit the situation. Music becoming more tense as the battle becomes more desperate, etc. Also prevents weird mood whiplash since it's reacting directly to your gameplay.

I agree, they could have been better regarding communication (and not just regarding beta, I mean it's their forum but they basically have more interaction on Something awful) but I still maintain that the main purpose of a beta, as pointed out in the first sentence of the quote, is to give feedback. But I suppose we (or atleast I) are nitpicking now. I should drop this. I've seen devs post on RPG codex too so it's not because they fear a hostile environment. Weird.

I don't like thinking about it because there's a skeleton hiding underneath it. Pretty scary.

And that's a good thing as long as it doesn't go crazy with it. Of course what counts as too much is gonna depend hugely on the person playing. Personally I'd be rolling my eyes if the characters walked into a bathhouse and every single person was sitting in a corner wrapped in a towel.

I actually prefer Concelhaut's Staff in Deadfire. Here's a screenshot of it: As for the Spirit Lance, here it is: I am hopeful (and fairly confident) that this isn't the final graphics for it, but rather just the particle effects that will eventually be applied to a 3D model. In which case Josh could have said "we're testing a new version which is more powerful" and we'd have at least had hope that it would be improved in a future patch. As for the damage incentive, there isn't one. It drains, which improves your survivability which, in turn, might allow you to do more damage, but it doesn't directly do more damage than the equivalent quality mundane staff. I like that spirit lance better than the one in PoE. It's like someone turned the Soul Reaver into a polearm.

Well the question was at what difficulty level will you play your first game of Deadfire, not PoE. My first playthrough of PoE was on hard, but I now feel comfortable enough with the mechanics that I intend to start Deadfire on PoTD. And yes, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of all backer beta players have posted here at one point. That's a very specific subset of highly invested players. PoTD doesn't require power gaming. I beat it the first time with a suboptimal RP focused chanter build with no forethought and a party composed entirely of story companions without minmaxed stats. You'll have trouble with a few fights, but it's not remotely insurmountable without minmaxing. Are you implying you didn't also stop your ears and bind your hands? Pleb.

I found the protagonist's conflict with Thaos to be primarily personal but I suppose it depends on how you roleplay the character. Certainly though your introduction to Thaos is entirely about the PC's past life's desperation and unanswered questions, which is appropriate given the prologue and first bit of chapter 1 is all about establishing the main theme of the game (What do you do when no one is watching and the universe just doesn't care) and its thesis statement (delivered by, of all people, that random jerk in Gilded Vale. "Often a bad cure is worse than no cure at all"). The PC is only the typical hero that wants to save the Dyrwood if you play them that way.