Varana

You will be given the choice of GOG or Steam. If you go to the fig campaign site and look at the supported platforms under the introductory video you can see GOG and Steam as well as Windows, Mac, and Linux. https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire#forum He (?) asked for the Pillars 1 key (in the bundle), though, not for the Pillars 2. But yes, Steam will certainly be an option.

The problem with PoE1's pseudo-restriction of camping supplies is that it dresses up inconvenience and boring walking around through empty spaces as "resource management". Running out of supplies didn't force you to think tactically and save your spells. What forced you to save your spells, was the inconvenience of backtracking to the nearest inn or vendor. Except for a few special occasions, that was always possible. Changing that to really restricting rest would heavily increase the possibility of playing yourself into a corner you can't get out of - and that's bad design, as well.

In the age-old tradition of RPGs, finding a name appears to be the hardest part of (character) creation. :D

You will be able to import your "end game" save - the one before you enter the final are, I think. If you don't have one or want a different starting point, you'll also be able to decide what you'd like to have happened in the first game. That's basically what we know up to now. How extensive that questionnaire will be, and which specific decisions are possible, hasn't been talked about yet.

Is that you, Jay Leno? ("Awesome" may debatable. Mostly, "big".)

I'm still wondering a bit why water colour should suddenly be "cartoonish" (not all art is cartoons ), but whatever. For a better impression, though, those example pics should be scaled down a lot - you won't see them at this size, usually (or at all). And seeing that they're the ones making the game, including UI and all other art, I do think that "does that fit into the general mood and style of the game" is a question they did consider at some point. :D

Special ammo is IMHO best implemented as a ranger per-encounter ability, lasting x amount of time, can be taken more than once. Or as a on/off ranger trinket - you put "fire arrows" (no amount, just generic item) into the trinket slot, and as long as they're there, the ranger gets bonus fire damage. Probably harder to balance, though. No need to fiddle with inventory.

Also for many people, Durance

And I thought that spot was reserved for Bioware on these forums. :D

I thought restarting at level 1 was a known fact? That thing with the gear: The way you're asking should make the answer pretty obvious. No, we won't keep that high-level gear. How stuff gets removed? By being a new game. *poff*, it's gone.

If Italian is the default language, the game should take place in Vailia. So maybe PoE 3. :D

And even if they save more content-heavy stretch goals for later, they'll know what they're doing, and will have planned for that. Last time, they just pulled stretch goals out of their behinds, and all these things - stronghold, certain levels of Caed Nua, and Twin Elms - suffered because of that.

The point with Durance and GM, however, was that they didn't contextualise present events in most of their dialogue. They suffered much, I think, from the fact that their personal quest was exploring their past through dialogue. Now, in theory that's not eintirely a bad thing, and Avellone should be commended for trying to do something else than the usual companion quest. The concept needs work, though, for getting better at being a quest. So they had lots of dialogue that was completely separated from the rest of the game. They didn't respond to anything you did, they reacted to the passing of time. And while Durance's ramblings were somewhat relevant to the main plot (by giving more information about nuking Eothas), the GM's story was basically self-contained. Which means that in this case, several unfortunate decisions came together to create a showcase of lore-dump NPCs. The other NPCs are a lot better at this.

That's a very good post. I wouldn't necessarily agree with the hint at "self-inserting" my own personality into the character. Yes, creating your own story is a large part of it; but it doesn't have to be you, as a character, or your own wishes and dreams, but more what you imagine your player character might wish or dream (I hope that wasn't too confused). It's a thing I also find in pen and paper RPGs. You play a character and fill him/her with life - you alone create their story, how they react to their experiences, how these shape them, what they want to accomplish, their relations to other people. RPGs like Skyrim (or even better: Morrowind) try to give you a background to do that. Bethesda PCs are famously "blank slates" - you're starting as a prisoner, and from there on, it's your character, your world, and your story. (There's not even a reason exactly why you're in prison. Make up your own.) You're the writer, not the reader. (Now, before this gets into a flamewar on Skyrim: That's what they're trying to do. With very obvious shortcomings. I'm not saying anything about how successful they were.) That can end up as self-insert fic, but it doesn't have to. (Apart from the obvious observation that ultimately, every story you tell is part of you.) The opposite, in RPGs, are games with a very defined protagonist whose story you play - be it the Nameless One, or Geralt of Rivia. PoE and similar games (BG, for example) are something in-between: Not open enough to just do your own thing, not constrained enough to really have a pre-defined character. PoE tries to push you more into the spectator direction, with its background stories (something that the BGs didn't have). But that means that there are aspects of both to be found in it. As for its companions, I think that Eder is so popular because he gives off very friend-like vibes - through his personality, mostly, and in small scenes like the waking-up, and I agree that this could've been made much more accessible. Durance and Grieving Mother, however, did not come across as "friends" to me, to be honest. One of my major problems with Bioware relationships and romances (and that starts with BG2, already, so it's nothing new) is that they often come down to helping a companion deal with their personal demons, as if I were a psychotherapist. (Oh, Aerie's lost her wings. Let's sit together and talk until she gets over it. Jaheira? Lost her husband. Viconia? Is a fish out of water, mistreated and almost lynched. Anomen? Is an insecure but pompous a**.) And the talks with Durance and GM, to me, seemed like this but turned up to eleven. (That I really didn't like their personality, didn't help, probably. ) GM didn't confide in me because I was a good friend and we did stuff together, she told me things because I was very skilled with my therapeutic sessions. But that is, I think, in part an issue with the dialogue tree system. There obviously is a "correct" path to a given outcome, because it has to be pre-programmed. (And if it's random, people will save-scum. And/or complain.) And that's the same with romances. I have, honestly, no idea how to avoid that with this dialogue system (or any other). You can make it bearable by making the dialogue really good and memorable, and if it's not, then having a game that is a bit tongue-in-cheek like Divinity:OS helps a lot. But PoE takes itself so very, very serious...

You could write notes in your journal?

I'm with general_azure on this one. The discussion has been almost exclusively centred on tactics and combat. For that, I have no real preference between 5 and 6. For party composition in terms of dialogue and companions, however, I very much prefer 6. (Or more, but then combat becomes unwieldy, so it's a compromise.) More interaction within the party, more options for party-NPC interaction, and the luxury of one or two "silent" companions (hired adventurers) for combat reasons without missing out on too much. Alternatively, the DA:O way of having a camp that you visit often and regularly with all your companions together. (Not like Brighthollow, where you parked them in separate rooms behind a lot of running and two (!) loading screens.)

You can change your pledge as long as the campaign runs, including a downgrade. (At least it seems that way; I can edit my pledge and choose a lower tier. Obviously, I didn't try to actually do this, so I don't know if they block that later on, but I don't think so.) Throwing more money their way is, of course, possible. After the campaign has ended, going lower won't be possible, for obvious reasons. On some campaigns, you can add bonus stuff even after the end of the campaign, but afaik that's the responsibility of the project creator, not the platform. So I'm not sure whether that will be possible for PoE2. (For Wasteland 3, which is also on Fig, it seems that there's no such option, unless I've missed something.)

You're probably thinking of Arab and Hebrew, or Chinese, Japanese, and so on. Polish is written with Latin script, just like English, the Cyrillic alphabet used for Russian is a descendant of the Greek one, exactly as ours is, and both languages are Indoeuropean.

Well, for a soul taking over a body, "to inhabit it" is an appropriate term - if maybe a bit uncommon, but mostly because most people don't talk about souls jumping between bodies in their daily lives. It's a bit ambiguous because in this sentence, the "for millennia" could be referring to either verb - "has inhabited" or "buried", and maybe they could've made that clearer. OTOH, if you know PoE1, you'll also know what's meant there.

Also, the ranger companion was permanent. He didn't even die unless the ranger died, as well.

Seriously, though. "Written into a corner"? That's how RPGs have worked since the dawn of time. A few got around it (creating other issues in the process), but resetting the numbers to level one should be nothing shocking. It's just numbers, a genre convention. Sure, they could have avoided that - by having the PoE1 level cap at 5 or so (like what BG1 did). Not fun, but apparently better narrative or whatever. It's not as if the reincarnation of Eothas were only there to "explain" the level drop. That's a nice bonus. The deus in statua* came first, using it to hang some drapes over the levelling was nice to have. And having your soul taken away is, in the game world's terms, as good an explanation as waiting for the next Watcher. I really don't understand the artificial fuss about something completely normal for sequels. * in statua for "within the statue" (answering the question "in which place?"); in statuam for "into the statue" (answering "in which direction?").

Even though I usually read novels, play games, and watch movies and videos in English and post on English-language forums: Your native language comes to you with much less effort. You understand things instantly, you don't have to gloss over unknown words, and so on. In a foreign language, it takes some work. Now, in games like PoE that are heavy on language, I tend to prefer English (if that's the original language). But for others, it might be the opposite. Sure, you don't need to look up every unknown word. But often, the word you're missing is quite important for the meaning - "She looked at me, tarrobribobulously, and pointed at a capavan high in the tree." Now, I can gloss over these things - she gives the protagonist a funny look and points to a thing, probably some kind of bird, and if it's important, we'll probably find out both things later on, but it's annoying, it takes you out of the flow of reading, and it requires effort. If that happens too often, it's tedious.

I really like that concept of class options for companions. In PoE1, it was very useful to have a priest around; unfortunately, the only priest available was Durance, and I couldn't stand Durance for more than one play-through. Which left me with having a hired adventurer without personality, or playing one myself (which I did, and a priest of Eothas, which will hopefully get more interesting this time around). Now, I have a bit of choice and can actually take companions based on personality, not just abilities. That's a very good step forward. (Well, BG2 mods have been there a decade ago, but you get the point. :D) So as long as you can cover all possible classes with the available companions, they're fine.

If they have a story worth telling with the Watcher at its centre, then I surely wouldn't want them to scrap that just because they can't find a better explanation for reducing him/her to level 1 for a new game. In fact, given Eora's soul mechanics, it's even one of the better justifications for doing it. And as we probably won't be spending much time in the Dyrwood, there won't even be the awkward situation of running into the same people as in the first game.

I think we can be reasonably sure that Eothas was not in that statue during Pillars 1, and for quite some time before that.