The Sharmat

People sure are weird about naked bodies.

These considerations do add potentially interesting quest hooks and complications, though.

Well in some cases it's less inspiration and more them outright paying the band for the rights to put a version of the song in the game. In any case we clearly hear totally different things in both soundtracks. One of us is going to be disappointed.

Laugh all you want. I don't skip leg day and neither do my characters.

I don't really think the Watcher is a chosen one by any means. Just a guy carrying around a couple millenia old grudge. Could have happened to anyone that saw what they saw. I mean I guess there's the whole "strong soul" thing but even then the soul was just resisting entropy because it hated Thaos so much.

And Gods can intervene to make sure someone awakens. I'd imagine they can do the opposite. Iovara probably has a better success rate sitting in a giant hole than she would in the outside world. Plus, she tried the evangelical angle. It didn't work then, when there were actual people that created the Gods still walking around leaking stuff. It's even less likely to work now.

Come to think of it, hadn't we heard voice samples of the companions in Pillars 1 by this point? Obsidian is playing this lot close to their chest.

ESRB ratings are crap anyway. An M game can be the equivalent of a PG-13 movie or an R rated movie. You really have to look at the content warnings to judge. The actual label is almost irrelevant.

Why not just have marshmallows rain from the sky? It's fantasy after all. Who cares what tone or feel the devs are going for? PoE has been aiming for something more grounded from the start, despite the magical elements. Not sure why you're surprised now. Or why so many people think "it's fantasy" is an excuse to abandon all internal consistency or representation of basic logic and human nature.

Playing a muscle wizard in POE 1 right now and it's borderline overpowered. While I love the feel of wrecking an entire mob with citzal's spirit lance I have to say I would understand if the summoned weapons were nerfed somewhat.

It's just a shame that so many RPG devs have pretty much embraced the story vs. combat false dichotomy. Video games are an interactive medium. They should each inform the other.

All well and good but how robust will the glute options be in character customization?

Why is "hand crafted" a bad thing? Random generation is the easy way out for anything but a roguelike and has been slowly strangling the open world subgenre.

Today I learned that basically every AAA game uses Polish folk metal for inspiration for its soundtrack.

As opposed to sitting in a soul prison for an eternity? She knew exactly what she was getting there. Sit around in Breith Eaman being smug at the Gods for petty satisfaction. Given the Gods are kind of proud selfish ****, it probably even worked a bit.

Not sure if you meant this but I hope its not Bioware style. So do I, but a fairly vocal group of players eat that stuff up.

The only game I've found to have genuinely difficult choices is The Witcher 2, so no.

Awakenings seem to vary greatly in intensity and just what is awakened. They're also extremely rare. It's a hell of a gambit to make.

It says something about the state of this genre that Romance was in the article's title and barely even addressed in the article itself.

Only music I liked in POE 1 was Thaos' theme, Shadow of the Sun, and a couple of White March tracks. Otherwise it was all just random vaguely fantasy atmospheric music. All three Witcher games have a great soundtrack but not sure how that feel would work with Eternity.

That would depend entirely on the player. Lots of people love Planescape: Torment because they like the story despite the fact that the game itself is terribly designed. On a similar note, as you might guess, I love Morrowind because of its fantastic atmosphere and setting despite the fact that, again, it's not a very well designed or difficult game. But that's hardly universally true. Given that video game writing is, on the whole, rather terrible, I have to assume that most players are not like this, however. Pillars has a decent story but I enjoy the problem solving aspects of the higher difficulties and for me that's what puts it above many other RPGs. This difficulty is much more than simply memorizing a formula unless you go out of your way to seek out overpowered cookie cutter builds on the internet, in which case you have only yourself to blame. EDIT: Also I hate this segregation of gameplay and story in games and only use that language myself because everyone else is so dedicated to it. A story is meant to evoke emotions and gameplay can aid in that by making a desperate fight actually feel desperate. But story driven games often neglect this to their detriment, with things that are supposed to be threatening simply seeming pathetic due to the ease of their defeat; all playing in to the plague of overpowered Mary Sue style player characters in modern RPGs.

I'll believe it when I see it. I agree with that old Josh Sawyer post about how romance is both under and over used in these games but it's so hard to get it right, and I know people will be clambering for the Bioware style. Here's hoping.

Very informative, good stuff. Reminds me of watching Black Sails then reading up on the people the fiction was based on. Charles Vane was considered a great success as a pirate because his career lasted multiple years before he died.

*DOUBLE POST* I hate my internet

On release day, a legion of waifu enthusiasts will be dismayed to learn the nudity rating refers solely to statues of the angler-fish headed local rendition of Ondra. Minus one very particular group of fetishists, anyway.