Progressive_Stupidity

In college a quarter of my class were openly and legitimately LGBT. And I was studying Psychology, not queer studies or something. And as us gays all know, there are also TONS of bi or curious people on the down low. Tons. Y’all really have no idea.

Regarding developer integrity/‘backbone’ etc, I’d just like to point out that fanservice is not inherently bad. Badly written fanservice is bad. In fact, in the case of an Eder romance, this was a perfect opportunity for positive fanservice. He’s considered attractive. He’s single. He’s the most popular returning companion with a pre-established relationship with the player character. It’s far more contrived and forced for him to NOT be a romance than for him to just be one. That’s really my issue. It comes across that he was left out BECAUSE people wanted and expected it (and with a half-arsed and apparently contradictory in-game reasoning to boot) and it just makes me roll my eyes a bit. It feels more about the writer than the character.

If the stuff about Eder is true, that actually comes across as very juvenile on the writers part. Like they’ve gone out of their way to make him unromanceable when really he was a natural fit for that feature if they’re gonna have romance in. It’s trite and contrarian, honestly. Especially if he turns you down saying he’s not thinking about that right now...but can get involved with Xoti.

I think you click on it then click on an ability if you want to power that ability, or on a character portrait if you want to give them resources.

Considering they postured about not doing shallow romance, it would be an odd choice to exclude the characters with already established relationships to the player character (or most player characters).

I'd appropriate it. lol

lol this is going five pages strong. Basically people are upset because they got themselves worked up over waifu Ydwin and convinced themselves that sidekicks would be full companions, even with sidekicks clearly being advertised as not comparable to fully fledged companions. They always said they would be somewhere between a companion and a custom built character and that they'd just join you as like a reward for some quests. Is it a pointless feature that could have gone towards creating an eighth full companion? Yes. I don't see story folks using them over companions and I don't see gameplay minmaxers using them over custom built. Was it deceptively advertised? No.

Andromeda was not that bad and all this overwrought wailing and gnashing of teeth about it caused your beloved franchise to be put on ice. Good job. It was a decent to good game coming on the heels of a great trilogy. That’s it.

....I thought that was the point. They never said they would have personal quests or banter. They’re NPC’s who may offer to join you after you complete a quest they’re involved with. They have custom voice sets and portraits. As advertised. That’s why they aren’t just called companions.

I don’t care about people smoking weed, but I’m still baffled why this thread exists.

Are all the summoned weapons two handed? No one handed available.

Baldur's Gate 1/2 are great examples of nostalgia at work. People criticize modern Bioware's writing heavily, often rightly so...but many of these same people seem to think that they used to be much better at it. Baldur's Gate has all the same tropes as Mass Effect or Dragon Age, executed to pretty much the same level of quality. Planescape: Torment meanwhile was a truly different game experience, which is rare in any age, regardless of quality. As someone who started their RPG journey with Arcanum, I spent YEARS hearing about how Baldur's Gate 2 was, quite simply, the ​best RPG that had ever been with the most fantastic EVERYTHING. The story was the best, the companions were unparalleled in depth, the soundtrack was incredible... and then I played it and I was just baffled. 'This learning disabled hamster dude is the famous Minsc? Will this joke really hold up longer than a few hours?' (It didn't). Almost every aspect of the game is cheesy and dated and the combat is a mess. I'm not going to go as far as to say it's ​a bad ​game​ but there is some severe nostalgia at work there. I'm probably guilty of the same with Arcanum, but I feel like at least the setting has remained unique this entire time.

Thank you!

I actually much prefer characters to have more unique facial features than be waifu-ified, but I’m completely with those that think Pallegina’s new portrait doesn’t look like her based on her POE1 portrait (which is almost a dead ringer for Rihanna). There is also definitely a strange underbite/ large jaw problem with all the Deadfire portraits. The new iterations are much improved, though.

It's the eyebrows on Maia's portrait that could do with fixing, if anything. They're too thin in relation to her features. Aaanyway, could some kind soul Deadfire this portrait up? Don't think I've seen it requested yet.

I'm definitely a bit concerned that they may have basically forced a square peg into a round hole with some of the castings just to make what is, essentially, a marketing ploy work, but that said Serafen sounds really good and hearing him instantly made me more interested in his character.

Yeah they had some pretty silly stuff, but in a good way. Divinity is a bit too nudge nudge wink wink. Can't remember if Pillars even had an attempts at humour, or they just fell completely flat for me. Exactly. It’s not even a discussion of quality. Baldur’s Gate as a series is deeply goofy and camp. If people think otherwise then they really need to clean off their nostalgia goggles. Walking around a city with a fairy dragon on my shoulder being followed around by a mentally handicapped man and his ‘space hamster’ while Americans doing hokey ****ney accents scream at me about their skill as a strumpet is hardly the same atmosphere as a read through of The Road. If that’s what is considered ‘dark’ then Deadfire would have to make a pretty drastic tonal shift from the first game to reach goofy and gimmicky.

I really hope we're not gonna get the 'anything that moves' promiscuous bisexual trope. But this isn't the 'bitch about tired m/m tropes' thread so I'll just leave it at that.

Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 are some of the goofiest games I've ever played.

I am getting gay vibes off Tekehu, but I've been trained to expect Aloth for any m/m content because swishy elf.

Is there any potential synergy between a skald and fury druid?

It's interesting that you brought up DOS2 as an argument FOR this when it's one of the things I really loathed about the game. The benefit of 3d models is that they can have animated facial movements and a more cinematic view. The benefit of painted portrait art is that it is (if done well) timelessly beautiful and unrestricted by technology in how the artist wishes to convey the character. DOS2 chose an approach that didn't take advantage of either of those things and, in fact, was the worst of both worlds. You've got these incredibly mediocre 3d models screenshotted as the only visual point of connection with the characters without the cinematic flair of something like Dragon Age where there's a zoomed in camera and facial movements/lip sync to justify it. I would, however, like to see painted portraits evolve in that there are simply more provided for major characters to show a dynamic range of emotions in conversation. Like a combat portrait, a neutral portrait and then cover the most needed emotions like sad, happy, shocked, angry.

My first request is always that, whatever the DLC is, existing companions have new dialogue if you can take them along. I also much prefer when story DLCs tie into and augment the main plot of the base game somehow so the story feels tight. Also, it's hard to roleplay a character from the White that Wends knowing almost nothing about it, so visiting there would be nice.

How can one know? Apart from Mercer that voiced Aloth and Eder and will be voicing them again, we can only assume that males will voice males and females will voice females Most probabaly we'll learn during next week when they announce more. Maybe some video with them talking about the characters they're voicing etc. Knowing the kinds of inflections/accents/timbres etc that a voice actor can do along with what you know about a character. Like, Tekehu will presumably have a distinct accent, for example.

So, for those who ARE familiar with them and their work, any speculation on who might be voicing who (assuming at least some of them are cast as companions/sidekicks)?