Longknife

The quality of the writing would suddenly plummet and there'd be a lot of people asking you to go to a random cave to retrieve their family's sword.

I'm surprised people think this, since Iovara is mentioned from relatively early on in the game -- from I think the second or third vision of Thaos, and then basically every time you see him after that. The whole storyline that comes out of the visions of Thaos revolves around the Watcher's betrayal of Iovara. There's definitely a buildup to her and I personally thought it was pretty satisfying to finally meet her in the present rather than as a memory. Maybe I'm in a minority, though. The thing is though that you never have her name for the longest time. Maybe I missed it, but yeah. You know who else is mysterious? Lady Webb. As such, I expected those scenes to be referring to Lady Webb. Instead it's just some new character out of left field.

Gogogogo, let's hear it. What races, classes and talents make up the perfect squad?

What's an SLG?

Based on what? The only significant disadvantage here is that a white family's wealth could stem back to the early 1900's and have been sustained until now, whereas a black family would've likely - at best - began acquiring wealth in the 70's. This does not however change the fact that when they DO acquire wealth (and they need not be as rich as the top 1%. Yes the white family may outpace them, but they've both hit a point it doesn't matter) they are treated with privilege. All you're highlighting is the why of the severe gap between two races, but this does not mean that if a black child is born tomorrow and sets out a path of good grades, a proper education and a well-paying job, that he will not be privileged, and privileged based on his wealth. I have a friend in the USA who recently finished Law school. He's beaner as hell, does anyone care? No, and after a couple big cases followed by investments that paid off, he's acquired $500,000 in about a year's time. I'd be inclined to agree it could be hard finding acceptance as a transgender individual, but then I remembered something: one of the head doctor's of the hospital of a town I lived in in freaking Oklahoma was transsexual. Of course they talked crap being the person's back, of course they didn't like it. But did they deal with it? Absolutely, because they needed that individual. The point is that race can only explain why the statistical imbalance between the wealthy whites and the wealthy blacks exists, but that does not mean that a black individual is not fully capable of becoming rich at this day and age. Hate to say it, but much of what causes status quo to remain is cultural: aka black families in America are simply less likely to stress a proper education to their children. There is also a degree of police prejudice that can make things more difficult for a black guy (I say this having grown up in a black neighborhood, and me and a friend quickly learned we could get places faster if I drove the car, simply cause we didn't get pulled over all the time), but it's not something that can be made moot. The privilege then becomes "I as a white male can smoke marijuana or do other less-than-legal activities that harm no one and possibly get away with it," and not so much a privilege that effects every aspect of our lives. And again that's how your argument is inobjective. By your logic, asians are often privileged moreso than whites. It has nothing to do with race anymore, it has everything to do with money. The lingering effects you see are cultural, not blatant racism in everything we see and do. The only racism you're gonna encounter will come from the police, but no idiot is gonna deny you a job position as an engineer, lawyer, doctor, scientist or what have you based on your race. If you wish to blame other races for black culture in America encouraging an education less, then I dunno what to tell you. I'd also like to point out how shortsighted it would be to discuss race privilege based on American culture alone. Within the context of the USA, sure, but many people within this thread are not American. Racism vs African Americans is especially bad and worse than anything else I've seen in another country (though I've yet to visit France, where I hear it can be quite bad). I mean Turkish people are the minority here in Germany and many of them are right here in my law studies with me, a couple of them wearing the head scarves and believing in traditionalist muslim values. Not gonna stop them so long as they can do the work.

Hard wasn't that bad. Hard I just ran into that trouble in the Endless Paths, not in other parts so much. I only mention Hard cause yeah even so, I quickly got sick of the Endless Paths because it was just nonstop resting, since every room demanded I exhaust my Wizard. PotD was more the one demanding it and/or it was highly risky not to utilize it.

But Fallout for example offered both more choices and more....thought-provoking situations. This goes for all Fallouts Obsidian has had a hand in (1 & 2 and New Vegas). A simple example would be that it's possible to passively rescue Tandi from the Khans, but this will result in the Khans survival, which leads to them terrorizing small communities in the future. It's this mix where a good karma character who avoids conflict and killing as much as possible will face the reality that sometimes avoiding conflict does not give the best ending. It's a stark reality shown where even well-intentioned actions can have bad reprocussions. Pillars of Eternity lacks this. There's not really a single decision made in the game that's some degree of morally grey. Quests in general have a tone of "help me with my problem, you good samaritan." After taking the quest, you can either follow through and be a good samaritan or you can somehow double cross somebody and screw them over....or simply ask for payment. I never ran across a quest in this game that got me thinking "damn this is a tough choice...." It's either clearly good or clearly bad. I mean I've caught myself asking before "how the HELL do I roleplay a character that would support the Dozens?" And that question is still highly relevant. Your character is shown firsthand that animancers are framed. Your character is practically given a bias towards animancy, if not for believing it's valuable, then at LEAST in it's defense as not being the source of the Legacy.....and even if you wanted to, you couldn't. This game shoehorns you into positions a lot. Maerwald will fight you regardless of what you say, Thaos will attack the duc regardless of what you say at the meeting, you cannot side with Thaos at the end (you can't agree with him) and you cannot lie and speak out against animancy at the hearing; even if you detest animancy and think it's worthless and choose to publicly disgrace it while personally investigating the Leaden Key yourself, the dialog options force you to announce animancy was framed. At the end you're given a rather bipolar option to passionately say animancy should be outlawed anyways... Fallout as a series (again, 1 & 2 + New Vegas) would be the standard I'd compare to. Which seems fair, considering this is a studio that houses people involved in making those games, and directly made New Vegas themselves. In that sense it's disappointing, because I recall when this was kickstarted they said some selling points would be morally grey areas and adult themes. Not adult themes like sex and violence, but like more refined areas of discussion. On that last part, I have to say I think they fell a little flat. They briefly touch on some, but nothing's ever explored in depth enough to really hit it home. For example animancy can touch on a lot of things in regards to personal freedoms, scientific practices of research and all sorts of other stuff, but is any of that explored? Not really. At best it's touched on once and that's it. It feels like a lot of good opportunities were passed by. Another criticism I have to voice (somewhat of a tangent) is that the ending "hook?" It's so weak. It's solid, don't get me wrong it's not that it's poorly executed or poorly done, and it's a good story with plenty of refined questions sparked by it. The problem? I think EVERYONE asks themselves about the existence of God by the time they're age 14. It's been done before. Atheism is not Bigfoot; you can see an atheist just by leaving your house, assuming you aren't already one, and merely encountering an atheist will make you face that question. Hell this vid popped up in my recommended vid list the other day and this really drives home that the whole "do Gods exist? Did a God create us or did we create God?" has been done before. This is just ONE episode of Bebop and it manages to concisely present the exact same question Pillars does: Iunno. I get the importance of the question and all, it's just....I got that 10 years ago. There's nothing daring or new about the main plot. It's been done before and I've already done all the thinking I think I can do on that subject. Pillars didn't bring ANYTHING new to the table for me on that subject.

i dont see why someone should hate democracy or any other form of government... they are all equally flawed. each is convenient for some and not so much for others, while the trully rich are simply above and beyond They are not "equally flawed". Some forms of government are simply better than others. So far representative republics have been very much out-performing despotism for example. I would dare argue all forms of government are "equally" flawed in that people are flawed. Democracy is "better" in the sense that it's one of the forms of government that best diminishes and slows the flaws people can bring about on a government. For example you can have a dictator who's perfect and amazing, a natural born leader. In that sense autocracy is perfectly capable of working, it's just that everyone dies, and the likelihood that his son or his vice or the like will be as good...? Pretty low. Anarchy is another that can, again, theoretically work, but the moment someone gets bold, there's problems. And communism? Communism sounds wonderful on paper, but it's possibly one of the most vulnerable forms of government to how flawed people are in practice. Democracy slows any chances for trouble or bad decisions to an absolute crawl, meaning that usually democracy has time to catch those bad decisions....usually. In that sense, I would still be hesitant to claim democracy is not equally flawed, simply because I think it's important to recognize a democratic government can fail and can succumb to the very same things other governments succumb to, it just takes longer. Nevertheless, stay vigilant.

Class and wealth privilege are pretty much universally understood to be the most significant factors. But they also tend to coincide with other sources of privilege more often than not. This would be true for African American culture within the USA, but gender? Sexual orientation...? None of this matters if you have wealth. Race only comes in as a factor because unfortunately the path to race equality came in step by step, with each step providing only so much as to ensure a gap remained. Furthermore, one could argue it's woefully inobjective to try to label it race privilege. Why? If you have a black guy who's ballin' and a multi-millionaire and he runs around screaming race privilege, well then wtf he's flat out wrong. If you have another who's poor and he shouts race privilege, then race privilege really only offers the potential to explain how his family remained in the lower class for so many generations. As for the here-and-now however, it's his lack of wealth that affords him no privilege, and were he to win the lotto tomorrow, suddenly he would have tons of it.

I'm at this transition where normal difficulty is too easy, but hard or PotD is too difficult. It's really annoying, because I've played some PotD and hard and had tons of fun with it, but two things, the second being very important and in depth: 1) I am addicted to Trial of Iron. This is just in my nature. Squad wipes? I wanna roll a new character. Bad habit that I struggle to break. 2) The most annoying part of hard or PotD mode to me? It's painfully obvious that the mob rulers (Wizard, Druid) are super important here. There's SOOOOOO many encounters where there's just enemies everywhere, and if you're not blasting half of them away with your Wizard, you're gonna die. Priest is important here too, but Priest is almost always important. There's two problems with this though. The first is that it's entirely possible to approach a fight and think you've got this, but no, no you don't. All it takes is one singular battle where you're hesitant to use your Wizard to full capacity, instead starting with his per encounter spells, and that could be the difference between life and death. That brief cooldown period can mean everything. For example let's say you encounter some enemy bandits or something and there's 6 of them and 6 of you. You think "ok I can handle this" and proceed to wait for a sign your wiz is vital. Then your frontline meets their frontline and within the first per encounter spell cast for wiz, your frontline characters are at half health. By the time you cast that Slicken or the like, it's already too late cause your frontline is down and your DDs will soon follow. On the other hand, there are moments where it's absolutely crystal clear you need all the firepower you have for a fight. The problem? That's every fight. You use your wizard and your priest, and when the dust settles and you move on, the fight following it is EXACTLY the same and demands the use of both. After the second one in a row, you're depleted and you need to use a campfire. That's obvious and all, but by the time you have four battles, you're out of campfires. The fights themselves are fun and I succeed with those reliably, but the rate at which I need to rest the entire party because I absolutely positively 100% rely on my Wizard and Priest being ready to help? That's....kinda annoying. Any tips on what to do? Am I doing something wrong for my wiz to feel that much in demand or is this normal? Is frequent resting just a fact of life in Hard/PotD? I hope not because I quite enjoy the battles themselves, I just don't enjoy the runs back to shops to buy more campfires/rest at inns.

Can we discuss this? I've played the game a couple times now, and the difference between what my characters do feels very minor. Any time I'm handed a quest, the decisions are very limited in scope, or they ultimately won't carry much weight or consequence. One quest might offer three options, but those three might be the difference between tons of reputation, 100 coin and minor reputation, or bad reputation and tons of items and coin.....but what does reputation even do? The only thing I've seen rep do is provide shortcuts to quests that could already be started without reputation bonuses, or a shop cuts it's prices down for me cause they like my reputation. If my rep is bad, at worst it's a squad of angry guys come after me and that's that: a forgettable encounter that only added some flavor. Let's talk Gilded Vale for a second, because I'm sure it's a town everyone's experienced and it does wonders to highlight my point: Who here has negative reputation with Gilded Vale? That's my point: the system acts as though there's choice and consequence, but the quests and interactions themselves don't allow for such a thing. The only way to really accrue negative rep with Gilded Vale is either petty insults to it's citizens (which doesn't accrue nearly enough to matter) or go on an absolute slaughter of it's citizens. There's gotta be like 5 quest opportunities to gain positive reputation with Gilded Vale, and only one quest that comes to mind that even offers negative reputation as a result of one of it's options. Quests are woefully linear most of the time, and even when they deviate, the typical deviation you can expect to see from a quest in Pillars? You've just confronted the bad guy and he's offering you something shiny if you allow him to walk or work for him instead. This is typically how it goes, and I can't say that the offers ever vary that much. Maybe I'm mistaken here, but I've yet to be offered, for example, a really badass weapon that I've just GOT to have, that I can only get if I solve the quest a certain way. It just doesn't happen. Maybe I can think of one instance where this happens, and it's only in conjunction with a specific class. Not that it matters though, because the effects of reputation are limited too. Either you get better prices or you can get someone to give you their quest quicker in dialog because they see your rep. That's it. At one point in a later stage of the game, I gained rep with a very small, insignificant group. I thought "what the HELL does this matter and why do I care?" Turns out that small insignificant group had a merchant amongst them. You can guess what my bonus was for getting the good rep. I also can't say I've ever proc'ed conversation reputation and thought "oh thank god, my rep saved me and allowed me to do this!" Nah, most of the conversation reputations, again, feel like flavor text. You go to a guy to get his quest, like you normally would, but this time he says "[Aggressive 2] Good, I need someone who knows how to take the bull by the horns!" If you lack that reputation, then he still gives you the quest exactly as he normally would.....For some reason the reps seem obsessed with rank 2 aswell. I can't really recall a rep above 2 being needed, which means if you wish to metagame, just switch up your responses after getting rank 2 of a certain kind. And finally, the endings. (ending spoilers ahead) Overall, it just doesn't feel like we even touched on enough for the endings to matter. What's more, if you're not afraid of spoilers, have a look: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_Endings If you are afraid of spoilers? What I want to point out there is the endings tied to the Gods are almost unanimously good. It's like they were afraid to dish out bad endings, so instead there...aren't any. When you talk to the Gods, they'll warn about each other's wishes and why the desires of the other God could be bad. But when you actually try it their way.....it's just good. Breaking pacts is bad, but I suppose what my point is is that none of the conversations you have leading up to that matter. All of the warnings the gods give about one another? Unfounded and meaningless. Every single choice only sings of the success it brings about. There is now "we were infused with extra souls to give us strength, but now we're bipolar." Hell, even the endings that seem like they're bad all around conveniently skip over the potentially bad parts of their mechanisms and only praise the good. Oddly enough, the exception is the companions. All of the companions within Pillars seem to have both success and failure conditions. They can come to terms with their issues, they can fail horribly, or said issues can go unresolved. Why don't we see more of this in general? The companion endings are exactly the types of endings I want to see, as they help make each character feel unique. Whereas the God endings all involve the Hollowborn curse being done and over with and people reproduce once again and feel great regardless of what you did (unless you crossed a God, in which case everyone suffers regardless of who you crossed), the companion endings can be good or bad or everything in between. Overall, I'm just frankly quite disappointed in Pillars in this regard. A prime example would be Heritage Hill. You blow the machine up? You're a hero and amazing. You turn it off? You're a hero but the neighborhood is still doomed. The moment you realize one ending is absolutely 100% superior to the other, you'll take that ending every single time. OR if you want to bring chaos to the world, you pick the other. There's no depth or consideration to any of the decisions you make within this game, they're all just very obvious and straightforward. Finally I'd just like to clarify that choice and consequence at least does matter for combat and character building, as you can design (for example) a Cipher multiple different ways based on the upgrades you pick. In the end, I feel Obsidian lost themselves in their desire to make everything viable, to the point where all is viable, but only because there's no real consequence to be had for the majority of the game. Thoughts?

Fighters are freaking amazing, ijs. Yeah they kill much slower than other classes, but at later stages they do not go down. It's painful to watch and not exactly exciting since all they do is swing their sword at the enemy until it finally works, but holy crap they WILL get the kill eventually. Not to mention they single-handedly hold half of the defensive line for the team.

Continuation from race balance. And here let me piss people off by hyperbolizing the tier titles again: God Tier Cipher Chanter Rogue Pro Tier Fighter Druid Priest Meh Tier Barbarian Wizard Ranger Monk WTF are you doing Tier Paladin Seem about right?

"Dear Obsidian, the game gave me all the benefits it promised me and now I'm stronk. Fix pls."

Except that is not what is happening right now. It's quite possibly the opposite. Barothmuk do you ever counter by making your case or do you just post cynical "nopes" and then enjoy sitting there telling people they're wrong and not as smart as you without bothering to try and explain why they're wrong and justify your stance?

There's a corpse thingy on the path to where you fight Thaos. Yknow, the ones you touch and then they disintegrate? One of them has three rings of something that explicitly give you and people around you immunity to movement-impairing attacks and spells for a brief amount of time. So you equip the ring, and you get three uses of a movement immune buff. The whole thing is like a giant broadcasted "THIS WILL BE USEFUL" because I didn't even know what was coming but saw that I got not one but three of those damned things and proceeded to stick them on the classes I felt I desperately needed active at all times. Aside from that, counter-stun them.

I think you could pull it off with a Fighter, but it'd mean skipping out on the defensive upgrades. Basically get the accuracy boosts for weapons and get the per encounter moves you want.

Gay People: Often mistaken for people with manners.

Here's something I didn't mention yet. So I PMed the mod to get Firedorn's snippet added to the megathread right? Chill mod, quick to respond, thanked me, no problem. The members started just downvoting me for presenting that evidence, or saying that it doesn't matter because blah blah blah. I was getting -2 on comment karma before I even refreshed the page. Eventually one of them even blatantly says "ur lying and being deceitful about how you present the info so I'm downvoting u everywhere cuz u deserve it." I took that post and linked it to the mod just kinda curious and asked "is this allowed?" I actually HATE reporting people and would rather settle issues myself, but these guys bothered me cause...had I been new to gamergate, they would've scared me off ASAP. The mod said I'd need to contact an admin to get anything done and unfortunately he can't do anything about the downvotes, to which I said no biggie and I was just surprised with the attitude from the redditors. He responded with "that's what happens when subreddits reach a certain size. People turn it into a blind circlejerk. Seen it happen before, it'll happen to this subreddit too." It was actually kinda depressing to hear him say that so matter of factly. I'll probably ask him how he can just stand it and not get depressed watching it happen, next time he's on.

Which is inobjective of you. And reminds me of something... Just a couple hours ago I saw an online discussion where a woman was caught robbing people. Essentially, she was selling $5 jewelry to people for upwards of $80, basically scamming them. She got caught and was forced to comment on it. Her husband jumped in to defend her. People commented and said "wtf why would her husband defend her?" To which some women answered "because that's what any real man would do." I do not agree with this sentiment. If I'm dating someone and they do something wrong, I ****ing tell them. I don't defend them, because if I defended them, it would be because I love them, and not because they deserve the defense on this issue. Same concept here. Not saying you love Anita, but I'm saying if she deserves to be called a liar? Call her a liar. There is no "but she's on my side!!!" I've spent all day ranting about GamerGate supporters - people on my "side" - who were acting like children and idiots. There is no "but they're on my side so I should defend their stupidity!" No, I call out the idiotic ones and I support the ones I think make good points. Anita lies. And it's sad to hear that it could be possible that she's lied about and misrepresented an Obsidian title and Obsidian MIGHT still support her. YOU should also be concerned with the fact that she projects the idea that "it's never enough" to the opposition. New Vegas is a glowing example of everything she wants from a game, and what became of it? Reduced to nothing but cannon fodder for her narrative. There was no integrity or no decision to acknowledge some games do things right. Nah, let's reduce it to cannon fodder. What motivation does she give developers to actually listen to her?

Dude are you kidding me? What part of: "Players are free to kill these sexualized female backround characters as a male power fantasy with no punishments for doing so. *Shoots Atomic Wrangler Hooker in the face* YOU'VE GAINED BAD KARMA "Watch out!" "Murderer!" -BLATANT CUTAWAY TO NEXT SCENE- Are you not understanding? There is no "o ur right I was mistaken" here. She lies.

He backed it before she had created a single video in the series and two years before she did the one with New Vegas. This makes sense. Email Obsidian or ask him on Twitter. Perhaps he thinks they have a point? Even if he agrees that they're wrong on his game, he could still generally agree with them and think their cause is worth backing. This does not. Here's why: The "Women as Backround Decoration" is a montage of games allegedly guilty of the trope. In the vid, she accuses New Vegas of: 1) Not providing female characters with any discernable personality, to the point they function only as eye candy. 2) Makes commentary about how women serve as prostitutes and how you would not see the same happen to men. 3) How killing these prostitutes is a very real and intended feature to support some sick male power fantasy, and how there are no real or meaningful consequences for doing so. Favorite part is she takes a gun and blows off the head of the Crier outside the Atomic Wrangler while commenting about "no consequences," but then proceeds to HILARIOUSLY cut the clip off not but one second after she dies to avoid footage of the Kings lighting her ass up, and even more embarassingly, she doesn't even BOTHER addressing the "You've gained Bad Karma!" pop-up in the top right. She blatantly lies and misrepresents games. It's nothing new. I also don't consider it normal to think "well they blatantly spread lies about my product BUT THIS INFO ABOUT THE OTHER GAMES SEEMS LEGIT AND TRUSTWORTHY." Others have commented she blatantly misrepresents Hitman in that video too. There is a difference between constructive, valued criticism and blatant misinformation. If I give you a university term paper I wrote because I want your constructive criticism, and you hand it back saying I never shutup about ponies so D- when the paper is about criminal law, then wtf you're blatantly lying and I don't gain or learn anything from that.

Why don't you ask him? He's answers lots of questions on Twitter and Tumblr. I will, though I can only hope that he would answer. I have NEITHER of those accounts but I guess I'll make a tumblr account (oh god) since I doubt I can phrase my question in 200 characters or less. I'm at a loss here. I don't consider removing the limerick spineless, I consider that business being business. THIS I consider spineless....or woefully ill informed....or...something. I mean it's plain as day she lies and purposefully misrepresents New Vegas in her Women as Backround Decoration videos, with the camera conveniently cutting off whenever counter-evidence is about to enter the scene to shatter her narrative.

I would really love to know how I could get an answer from Sawyer on the matter of him sponsoring Feminist Frequency. That's not even a matter of "I don't like it, so how dare you sponsor it." No, that's more of a case where I think it's an outrage in the same way I'd wanna talk to Obama if I found out he was funding Mitt Romney's mudslinging campaign of him. It's just so illogical that it's borderline insane. I'm curious, I'm confused and I'd love to hear it justified.

Got a source on this? He's on the list of backers as "J.E. Sawyer. http://www.feministfrequency.com/donate/kickstarter-backers/ This is actually what pisses me off, unless there's a damned good explanation for it. I don't care about the limerick, but wtf is this? Is he not aware that she blatantly misrepresented Fallout New Vegas in her "Women as Backround Decoration" videos? And blatantly lied about game mechanics in it? Why on earth would he sponsor that? What motivation could he possibly have for doing so? Does he like people unfairly trashing his work?