Karkarov

In all fairness having them un romancable in one game, but not in the sequel can be very reasonable. Example: Jaheira in BG1 cannot be romanced. She is married to Khalid, and he is very much alive. At least until I get a better party member, then bugbears eat him. That is neither here nor there. The point is, it makes sense that you can't romance her in game one. Pallegina fits well here also, because in the first game she is obviously extremely driven, and being pushed by the forces of her code, loyalties, and own idea of what is best for the Republics/Dyrwood. It is very clear she was going through a ton of turmoil at the time, and likely thinking of nothing but her duty. The second game? She has found her place in the world, and possibly made peace with it regardless of how it turned out. So she may be more open to other things. Edit: Just as an aside, I always found it odd that people insist on it being companions you romance. Can't there be significant NPC's too? In some cases wouldn't that even make more sense?

Okay guys, congratulations. You made me waste time on my day off. I have no created a "portrait comparison image". Kark, what the heck is the point? I am glad you asked Kark. Let me explain. 1: Why change the portraits for the 3 companions to begin with? Maybe doing a comparison image will shed some light? 2: Are the new portraits "that" bad? Comparing them directly without having to image swap is the best way to check. 3: How well do the new companion portraits match up, do we think they are good just because we have no reference? Here is the pic. I have the "Eternity 1" portrait on top, dropping to a screen cap of Eternity 2 portrait, ending with the "watercolor". Please bear in mind, the screen caps on top look higher quality because they are raw, base, losses versions of what you see in game. The ones I captured off videos were recording from gameplay, converted into compressed video files, uploaded to youtube, then screencapped on play back, and finally reposted to the internet so I could put it in thread. Each step in that line costs image quality. I touched it up as best I could to close the gap, but there is only so much you can do. This is why I included the PC portraits too from Eternity 1, cause they didn't change, and give you a clear example of what quality loss happened. My conclusions - 1: They were changed because when you really look at them all side by side you see two problems. They really aren't in the same style as the other portraits, they are just slightly more scratchy, watercolory, and blurred. This is really clear on Aloths portrait. Also Pallegina may no longer be a five sun, and her portrait clearly indicates she is a member, so they may have wanted a more generic look. 2: No, they aren't. I still prefer Eder's original, but this "he doesn't look the same" is nonsense. He has maybe put on a few pounds and is a little older. They are clearly the same guy, and the new one looks more consistent with the other portraits. I actually prefer Aloth's new one anyway. Pallegina.... yeah I agree it could still be better. 3: Nope, they hold up fine, they look consistent with Eternity 1 player portraits, and have good quality. The lack of Eternity 1 versions is a non issue.

I have avoided posting in this thread, and even reading must of it, that is.... until now! *cue John Cena music* So here is the problem. There is no evidence to indicate you get a characters "likes and dislikes" in the journal until you actually discover them in game through interactions. Saying a person should not, or does not, note how other people react to things and change their behavior based on this .... well that's naive opinion. So noting how your companions react to certain things is natural, and realistic. There is also the catch 22, just because you know Aloth hates animancy, doesn't mean you "have" to agree with him on it if you don't. It also doesn't mean this Aloth talk is just you and Aloth, while everyone else wears blinders. Maybe Pallegina is okay with Animancy, you express your support for it to Aloth, Pallegina isn't in the coversation, but she is there. It can easily tick some unseen box. This is also key because, surprise, companions will have disagreements with each other too.

Yeah GoG used to be different. Used to be all they sold were old ass games from the 80's, 90's, and their own CD Projekt games, shocker, they didn't make much money cause there is not much of an audience for those games. Their own games like Witcher 2 did okay, but those games were available through other outlets, and were more convenient to use through those outlets. All GoG has done over the year is listen to the market, and do what it needed to so that it could be a relevant platform competing with Steam. The GoG you are talking about never got games unless they came from Kickstarter. Modern GoG gets most of the good games that go to Steam, far less of the pre release infinite alpha crap, and has a competitive platform making it convenient for their customers to use their service. It isn't called greed, it is called intelligent business decisions. Meanwhile their only real core value that they had on day one, was no DRM, anything else you name is your invention and opinion. Their core value is still there, and there is zero reason to believe that will change, short of a major company shake up. DLC is a choice of the games maker, not the vendor.

Aarik, I need Eder, Aloth, and Kana Rua's face photoshopped on to this one stat.

There is a disc, but it is just a steam installer. Not a stand alone copy of the game. See this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91327-physical-copy-of-the-game-is-drm-and-steam-free/page-3

Uh no. This time there will be no physical copies. It is the only way to get a collector's box though.

But... what is music? Why is Pillars soundtrack even written in archaic tonal system? What year is it, 1817? If Justin Bell won't expand his musical language with some microtones I will demand a refund! Such a sellout. You completely dropped the ball. You should have said, "But.... what is love!? Baby don't hurt me! Baby don't hurt me. no more!"

Don't worry they have confirmed Eternity 2 will have actual music in it. Here is one that I have personally been assured will actually be in game.

Lol not exactly. It is all based on language and culture choices. Look at some real world locations and cities, there are plenty of places in reality that have weird ass names, and I have run into more unpronounceable names than I care to even think about.

This was by far the coolest update so far for me personally. Very excited by what I saw, props to you obsidian!

Personally my character will be princess leia in her middle years, where she is clearly a ranger, and her animal companion is an ewok. On a serious note, I agree, a big mastiff or other hunting dog would be a cool pet/companion. Also didn't sawyer just post a pic of Sarafen with like a billion dogs in it?

At mid/high level D&D it isn't the DM's lack of skill, or need to update some sheet, that makes combat take a long time. It is the fact that a player may need to think a moment about what they are doing, may have dozens of dice involved in the resolution, there may need to be multiple saving throws for tons of targets, potential rules discussion as someone may need to clarify if power or item X nullifies action Y, the DM may have 5-10 mobs to control themselves, initiative has to be done each round, etc etc. It can just get very complex.

I guess it is a little bit that, but the truth is far simpler. One round of combat, especially at mid level +, in D&D, or other tabletop games, takes a helluva long time if you have a lot of players. I was once in a game with 10 players, no one had problems keeping up with what was going on, but one round of combat took 35 minutes. That is just not a fun experience. When I played D&D the ironic truth is, my preferred game size was the DM, and 5 players. It gave enough characters to cover all the bases, and was a big enough party to make encounter design fun for the DM.

Well the thing is, you are playing with a number of other players. So the DM can target your weakness all they want, someone else on the team probably covers it. Also any creative DM can make unwinnable encounters, but it isn't that much fun killing off your players believe it or not. The real skill was in building encounters that were challenging, but winnable. The line between an easy win, and an unfair cheap encounter, is way finer than you think. That is enough off topic about that though

And PoE1 indeed does not have "non-viable decisions". Bow barbarians don't count) It has less optimal choices, not "non viable" choices. Also min maxing is a matter of taste, you enjoy it, I don't. I don't go out of my way to game the system if making normal choices is already good enough. It probably didn't help that all the min maxers I grew up playing D&D with sucked all fun out of some games with retarded builds, and rules lawyering.

A well made RPG doesn't have "bad decisions" in character development. I still laugh when I read min maxer posts on Eternity, it is not needed at all, and the game is very beatable without it.

In theory it makes the game more immersive and "realistic". The more you do a given action, the better you get at it. As long as you keep it from being gamey (IE: Your 1 damage, 1 heal, mp restore spell), it can work really well..... Well..... as long as it is a single character game, not a party based top down view, real time with pause game, where enemies don't even respawn. Seriously, this doesn't work for the type of game Eternity is, and is actual counter to a lot of the design philosophies. I still find it odd they officially included a "retrainer", if people wanted it let them use mods for it, they were there day one.

Considering that this community is probably the most hard core, and therefore niche, community for eternity games it is worthless as a measuring stick of what players want. That said, the fact that the posts in this thread are 50/50 at worst indicates even the supposed "hard core" aren't that worried. The cold truth is this, to the majority of people who end up playing Eternity 2 won't even stop to think about 5 versus 6. Even if they do, they will be highly unlikely to think 6 is somehow inherently better. I expect some reviewers will mention it if they are big RPG sites, but that's about it.

He is a fuzzy isn't he. But you can't use him Boeroer, there can only be one blue orlan.

Good lord man. PS: If you guys are talking about Serafen you do know he is a Rogue/Barbarian first class option right?

Rack up one more vote for, "Why don't we actually try playing the game before assuming it will fail?"

.................................... WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT Okay so she has some interesting lungs on her. Pardon me, I need to go put down the bird rebellion happening outside my window, then clean the blood from my ears.

You can still play Eternity in 4k on one monitor, and honestly, it doesn't look that much better at 4k than it does at 1080. It isn't a graphical powerhouse.

So...... How easy is it to mod that UI again? Inquiring minds (or mind) wants to know.