The Sharmat

I thought of it more as his job is as a release valve for people suffering under the absolute worst kind of torture to the extent that the extinction of their lord and his entire family is something people are willing to look the other way on, so it kind of caters to both sides. It maintains status quo in that unless something is so bad you're willing to become the Effigy you're supposed to just shut up and take your licks, but it does give an alternative other than mass slave uprisings for guys that just like to torture their serfs for sport. Besides, I think the Engwithans were beyond mere colonialism in the sense we'd understand it. I mean, they all killed themselves to make these gods. I think they believed in what they were doing as more than a pragmatic way to spread an empire.

Yea, this. Durance, Aloth, and Eder were the only characters who had detailed arcs paced over the whole game. Everybody else was basically like "I have 1 problem. Please fix it." And then they proceed to stop talking to you once it's fixed. I think people that say this just didn't use the companions they didn't like. Sort of like how G0-T0 was a really interesting character in KOTOR 2 but no one used him because they found him boring, so he never got to talk so they never got to figure out why he wasn't boring. It's possible this is true of Deadfire's companions as well and glitches are just screwing me. So far of these characters I've only seen two that have something resembling a character arc, and they're basically concluded with minimal effort in a very short period immediately after recruiting them unless you screw around with 60 hours of sidequests before touching the alleged main story at all. Nothing like the long, hard to predict arcs "boring" companions like Kana or Sagani have that depend on basically everything they can see or hear with the Watcher in PIllars 1. Ryz: The word playersexual isn't even in that post, sorry you were triggered so hard by that one time I used it. I clarified later that I was mistaken and in reality everyone but Edér was bisexual. Which I suppose is very slightly better writing. But I still can't imagine it is the way it is for any reason other than power fantasy.

They still lack a character arc for the most part, or much reason to travel with the Watcher. Though the latter thing was a problem in PIllars 1 as well.

Don't compare apple and oranges. Deadfire in 1 hour and 15 minutes was a developer speedrun without exploit, not normal gameplay. BG2 speedrun record without exploit is also around 1 hour as well (with them it's 21 minutes). If you do main quest only without ridiculous speedrunning stuff I'd be surprised if it took more than 10 hours.

It's never explicit but I got the impression he's playing a long game with his double dealing.

They are more fleshed out. It's not all "click companion and trigger conversation" like in POE1. They comment a lot more (or do things) when you visit places or during quests. They change barks depending on disposition. Some have ship only stuff to say. They have auto-dialogues based on disposition with the watcher and companions, although they seems to trigger too fast in many cases which probably cause others to never trigger and some disposition are bugged as well. There are a few adventure-text where they will have opinions. They have banters which aren't all about saying funny things. The biggest change is really the quests/places commenting though. I don't think I've done a single quests where there was no companion comments and it's not all flavor one liners. For example, Maia intimated the Ruatai ship captain in All Aboard for me without me asking her. Yes I like that they chime in more often but that's the only improvement. Everything else is a step back. At least none of them are quite as pointless or short as Pallegina or the Devil of Caroc in Pillars 1, but none of them even come close to the ones that had good arcs in Pillars 1.

He'd be a hypocrite if he held it against you, really.

O wow so cool! So they have time for this but not for fixing the game... Different team. Companion artist/modelers don't bugfix... So they not gonna test new content for bugs etc? Shame.(Mostly joking. As i said before this is just minor annoyance) It will take all of two minutes to make sure that Mirke *Nods sharply in your direction* after you recruit her.

Meh, I'm with OP. I wasn't that into New Vegas and the plague of open world cannibalizing all main quest content in what few RPGs are still made is killing me. The only thing worse is arguments about what RPG actually means.

If PotD is this easy is it really just a PotD problem? "Veteran" and "Classic" must be absolutely trivial.

O wow so cool! So they have time for this but not for fixing the game... Sidekicks have almost no content so I doubt it's going to take a lot of resources away from anything to implement this.

Only the new companions. And they're not bisexual, they're playersexual. Which is way worse. Xoti shows no interest at all in women unless it's a female watcher that's coming on to her. I didn't even realize this. If so that is annoying, I used to play BGII with my PC race and gender selection based on who WON'T be romanced by my planned core NPC party members. So if I plan to take Anomen for whatever reason I play a male, if I plan to take any of the three female romances I purposely play a female or a specific male race that I know they won't romance. I ended up never really playing human, half-elf or halfling much because of it since everybody romances those three races. Nah turns out I was wrong. They avoided the player sexual thing by just making most of the party full on bisexual. I guess that's better?

I can forgive Xoti too because it turns out she's psychotic, I don't expect rational behavior from Eora's version of the Son of Sam killer. Yes. Serafan, Pallegina, Aloth and Eder all have plenty of nonromantic content. Xoti and Taekhu are pretty thirsty though but you can shut fishboy down without him going on about it. Xoti apparently is a different matter but you can probably avoid that by never flirting with her. That said I didn't find the POE1 companions all that great outside of Eder and Aloth. (granted I didn't use the WM companions) I don't think any of the companions have plenty of content, platonic or not I thought the whole point of having less of them was to flesh them out more. Here I am left hoping that I'm just missing most of it because of bugs.

Of those I've only played Witcher 3. Not even close. Hell I got less bugs in Pillars 1 by a good bit but I understand my experience is rare in that regard.

Wael wants to show stuff to some people and hide stuff from others. Which one it is depends on what would annoy the most people. Wael is just a troll.

I'm inclined to agree, because of experience and the fact that the only attempts that ever came close involved premade characters or a lack of choice on the part of the player; but at the same time...couldn't this be said of any kind of story an RPG might try to tell? Maybe story in games is just doomed from the start but I don't want to believe that. Surely, someone will get it right, someday. They just sure didn't manage it here.

Good news! They're bugged and barely there in the first place.

Let's just take the identity politics out of it and say it's weird that of the potential subset of people forced by circumstance to travel with the watcher, almost all of them come from the subset of the general population that want to **** them. That a disproportionate number of the companions are bi is just a side effect. Also of note is that in 100% of games where this is the case, the writing seems to have gone downhill compared to earlier installments where that was not the case.

Start adding in hidden exceptions like that to the AI scripting and it'll become a nightmare pretty rapidly. Yeah it sounds good just this once but it'd be easy to go too far.

Only the new companions. And they're not bisexual, they're playersexual. Which is way worse. Xoti shows no interest at all in women unless it's a female watcher that's coming on to her.She can end up dating Maia. I stand corrected, she's just thirsty as ****. Still hate the "IT'S FANTASY" argument. Just because I like fantasy worlds doesn't mean I like juvenile power fantasy like "everyone wants to **** you because you're big hero man".

Only the new companions. And they're not bisexual, they're playersexual. Which is way worse. Xoti shows no interest at all in women unless it's a female watcher that's coming on to her.

I mean, the game being programmed correctly would do it Even more mandatory automation on top of the existing optional automation sounds like a sure way to frustration.

Aloth being pro-authoritarian but also pro-autonomy makes sense when you realize he's British.

I agree with most of this but I just want to point out that Tekehu seems like the kind of person that would immediately proposition someone he just met if he was even only slightly attracted to them.

So much for all those notes about the setting Sawyer claimed they had. They clearly didn't plan anything in advance. Or if they did they threw it out. Woedica's symbol in Sun-in-Shadow is an unbroken crown in contrast to everywhere else in the game for a reason. Yeah there's lots of sophistry that can justify a retcon, but it's still a retcon.