Karkarov

I won't be doing an all single class run probably ever. With 5 party members multiclassing is pretty great for bringing in more versatility so no reason not to. That said, I am still going to single class some characters for sure. Such as Aloth and Xoti.

Just as an aside, no "all" do not agree. I think planescape: torment is the most over hyped insult to the campaign world it is named after that ever was. It had crap gameplay, the"philosophy" was often sophomoric and pedantic, and quite frankly the game was 100% style over substance. No thank you. Your example is great though because it shows why Dragon Age is actually better. See the thing is, your three options are limited to only three, and they are sort of corny, but the person you are talking to actually responds differently to each option. Unlike planescape torment where you are faced with the illusion of choice. As for this announcement, that's fine, if they could budget it all good with me. As long as they avoided the Bethesda Water Cooler gimmick where 50-70% of the npcs in the game are just voiced by Bethesda staff and all sound the same. "Choice" wise it won't be significant because the main character has no voice anyway. There may be need to record multiple responses but it is still only half the conversation.

Absolute waste of your time at this point to try the backer beta. This is not some indie team selling you an early access game, the backer beta is a VERY small part of the real game and is only intended to showcase the mechanics and allow for play testing. You could complete the whole thing in 4-5 hours easily. Meanwhile the actual full game, which will be updated well beyond the backer beta which is builds old, will release in... 24 days? Little late to care about a beta.

I gotta say thanks for posting these comparisons! Also I am pleasantly surprised and happy to find that I prefer the "new deadfire" version in all cases. Great job by the Obsidian art team, you are all the best!

"Being worked on" and "We have a solution" are very different statements. At this time, regardless of what Obsidian is trying to do, only Steam is getting the items from the scavenger hunt. So unless you are die hard anti DRM/anti steam, there is really no incentive to wait around and see if Obsidian can do something for GoG. Wise man once said, "One in the hand is better than two in the bush".

At this point I would advise anyone who hasn't redeemed to redeem on steam unless they are die hard anti DRM. Why? Because you can't use the codes in the scavenger hunt unless you are on steam, GoG users won't get it apparently.

Where are these trolls? I've been here since I backed the game and have never seen any trolls but I have seen people get classified as trolls just because a person doesn't like or agree with what they say (usually the case on the Internet anyway). All the real trolls have mostly left this forum. There are a few "borderline" people but it is no big deal. Like I mentioned, it was really bad in the months leading up to eternity 1 launching, and about 1-2 months after that. With Deadfire it never even got close to the levels of troll we saw with the original.

There is no good reason for Sawyer (or any other Obsidian Dev) to post on the forums, especially right now. The game launches in a month, this is serious crunch time and they need to focus. Social media and such gets more and more exposure every day, and it is way easier to police a twitter feed than a web forum. Cold, but true, there is no real evidence to indicate a Dev interacting on the forum is actually helpful to the Dev in any way. Sure it is good public relations, but they have a community management team that is very good at that already. Let them do their jobs, let the dev focus on development. As for why stop posting? Daily spam about how basic principles of Eternity should be changed because "it isn't like Baldur's Gate", or "But in Baldur's Gate they did it this way", or "In D&D it would work this way". Basic principles being things like energy meters, no save or die stuff, complete overhauls of the health system, etc etc. That 50 page diatribe on the release day of pillars blasting it and calling it a 1/10 game and one of the worst isometric RPG's ever from an RPG Codex member didn't help much either. Trust me, they made this community suck in the months leading up to Eternity's launch, we are fortunate they decided to "boycott" Deadfire.

If you want a biased insane opinion just go read RPG Codex. There is not a lot of hero worship going on here. Just people who actually played the first game on day one mentioning that despite all odds, he game was in fact playable on day one, and not suffering from hundreds of game wrecking bugs. If stating that fact is hero worship I guess I am hero worshiping *shrug*

I was planning on making Eder a swashbuckler just because it seems to suit him, also it means I don't need to make room for some other rogue

It depends on the game etc. A better question would be, why do you even have portraits at all? They aren't "needed" per se, but they are nice for dialog. Case in point, lets look at Divinity Original Sin 2 (I game I mostly don't like) versus Deadfire. So, it is painfully obvious why using the character model works for Divinity, but is not so hot for Deadfire. Simply put, their character models are much much higher quality. Now don't get me wrong, I am happy with Deadfire's character models, and they are a huge step up from Eternity 1, but they are not where they need to be for them to be used as portraits yet. I felt like models as portraits in conversations did work for Tyranny, but mostly because they did that hilarious emote thing with them which kind of brought it to life a bit. Also they tended to be the whole upper body, not just the head. I used Graven Ash facepalming as a avatar for some time after all . That said Deadfire isn't even going that route, so I think the watercolor style adds a nice flair.

You did play Original Sin and it's sequel right? Those games are both stupidly boring unless you are a munchkin who only likes RPG's for character stats and combat, or you have a buddy to play with. Probably comes from that lack of a strong story, or rewarding exploration. That said rewarding exploration is kind of a weak point for most RPG's these days.

Exactly. All that answer comes down to is.... okay... well they still exist, and they still have power, and they still answer prayers (hell you have talked to most of them at this point), so does this knowledge even matter to you? Does it actually make them "less godly", did gods come before them, and if so, where are they? That revelation doesn't actually change anything for your character, but it forces your character to decide what it all means to them. As I said, the story is about personal discovery, coming to terms with your past, and deciding your actual place in the world. Not the gods, not Thaos, not Iovara, and certainly not all the Animancy subplots.

It depends on a number of factors. 1: Budget. 2: Theme of the game. 3: Just how much dialog is there? Deadfire makes no sense to be fully voiced cause they don't have the budget, the theme of the game is slower paced story/exploration heavy RPG, and there is a metric crap ton of dialog. Notice how Original Sin most dialog was short and to the point? The game was not that story/exploration focused, all the effort went into the multiplayer and combat? Notice their budget was a lot bigger?

Uh..... what? No, there won't be a "ton of bugs" the delay in launch was in fact to fix bugs not make more. Balance changes are easy to perform because the mechanics are based around universal modifiers and simple math, so making adjustments is fairly straight forward. Also people looking at the backer beta as a sign of the finished product, OMG STOP IT. The backer beta is versions behind where Obsidian is, just like the Eternity 1 backer beta was. Many of the "bugs" or balance things you don't like were probably fixed a month + ago and they just aren't going to release it into the BB. So, did Eternity 1 get a lot of changes to balance as time went on, and a couple bug fixes? Yes. Was Eternity 1 completely playable from start to finish on day one, and an enjoyable experience? Yes. If you are going to make yourself wait do as Wormerine said, wait for the expansions. I will absolutely be playing it ASAP. Also I don't know what the people who claim Eternity 1 was unplayable until patch 3.0 were smoking, but it must have been some seriously strong stuff.

Only Obsidian, and they aren't sharing. Obviously there will be an expansion per the fig campaign, that's all anyone really has.

I don't know that hair bun looks pretty secure to me

I would argue you are completely mistaken.The plot of eternity is about the mystery behind your past life, trying to find out what your past self wanted to know, and discovering how to deal with the personal trauma of that past. The "main plot" is actually a very personal story about self discovery and what you believe. The animancy issues are a back drop. Your character could revile animancy, respect it, or not care about it one way or the other. It is a focal point of the sub story surrounding the factions of Defiance Bay, and the dyrwood on the whole, it is not a focal point of your personal story. Most of this subplot really just boils down to learning about your "enemy" and his motivations. The climax about the gods being man made is nothing but a foil to serve as your pasts life question, and the answer is that in reality, it wasn't relevant. As I recall the games own writing implies that once you discover what you do, you can't even remember why it troubled your past life so much. And that is because the truth is, the revelation of the gods isn't what troubled your past life, it was your role in the conflict between Iovara and Thaos that caused your troubles. Your past life could not come to terms with whether he made the right choice or not. Basically if Thaos and Iovara were two sides of the same coin, your character represented the person who called heads or tails.

If she had pointy ears she'd make a great Pale Elf. Honestly modding pointy ears onto her is probably easier to do then completing a good water color conversion. Yea, ears are tough, but even more tough is proper pale elf grayish color without making it look like a zombie. If somebody wishes to do this "surgery" on the original portrait I can make a watercolor version out of that. But as it is here's just a regular one: I thought he meant the other portrait? That pic needs no modding at all, her ears clearly go under her hair so it is not clear if her ears are pointed or not. She very well could be an elf trying to hide the fact.

Aarik may get back to you over the weekend, I think they were still pretty slammed with pax today.

There will be a number of balance changes and gameplay tweaks, yes. But it is unlikely that many major things will change before launch. It is basically the same as Eternity 1, there were tons of balance fixes, the stats changed a bit on launch, etc etc, and maybe 1-2 things got added, but for the most part it was 80% the same game.

If she had pointy ears she'd make a great Pale Elf. Honestly modding pointy ears onto her is probably easier to do then completing a good water color conversion.

That is why it is important we admit that we don't understand how it actually works. I will say we do know the Engwithans were closer to this renaissance than modern Eora is, or at least they appeared to be. Yet the gods saw fit to step in and mostly blast them to kingdom come. So there is an argument for your idea. That said you could also argue even if a soul fragments to bits and is no longer whole, those bits can just join other fragments and become new souls, and the durability of souls over time is enough to allow this cycle to basically stay constant and there are always enough souls available. If sawyer wants to lore dump us I doubt anyone would complain

Well to help allay your fears I spoke to some people about something *cough*, and mostly what I found was they just wanted to hear general ideas and keep the super specific stuff as minimal as possible. The idea being twofold 1: there was only so much time and money at play and 2: the more generic they kept it while being true to *coughideascough* the easier it would be to fit in the actual game and tie to other aspects of it. Also I have not heard anything about these conversations in months, but I am not worried.

As discussion of the metaphysical aspects of the game is there are two things to consider. 1: We don't actually know how it works. We are only presented with in game knowledge, and the in game animancers who are honest will tell you their sciences conclusions are just a best guess, not hard facts. So by definition, we don't have enough data. 2: The only people in game who arguably may have enough data are not only not sharing, but for the most part are actually quite unfriendly to the watcher. Master of the Deep, Thaos, the gods in general, etc. However, their actions can be examined..... Thaos is clearly wreaking holy hell on the newborn souls in the Dyrwood, he hasn't been doing it for a day or two either. He has been at it a decade plus by the time you arrive I believe. That's thousands, if not tens of thousands of souls. His machines are either trapping, our outright destroying these souls too. So he clearly did not plan to put those souls back in "the system". Yet doesn't seem concerned about the long term well being of the world, in fact, he thinks what he is doing is best for the world long term. So clearly he is not worried about any kind of "soul heat death". The Master Below actually wants to swap to a mortal form so it can go travel about a bit before it dies a natural death. IE: The Master is clearly not concerned about whether or not it dies, and or, will be reincarnated. It wants to hit the reset button and fully expects to come back in some form for another round eventually. Meanwhile the gods are cryptic and don't really tell you much in reality, but there is one thing you learn, the world and it's metaphysical soul science existed before they did. So regardless of whatever it is Rymrgand might be doing, the system works with or without him, and for all his driving entropy, there are other gods who drive the opposite such as Hylea. The gods are at their core about the creation of a world governing system meant to keep things on an even keel, so by definition, Rymrgand is not really doing anything "destructive" in the big picture. So yeah, we don't know how it works, but we do know that the people who might understand the system aren't worried about "soul heat death" or anything like it. So we don't really have anything to worry about in modern Eora times.