[Killed Raedric 2nd time, lost rep with Gilded Vale]

When I did it (pre-patch) the only way I could lose REP was if I unlocked any chests or doors I hadn't previously unlocked - apparently the ghosties don't like you theivin'. 

[Reduce the Loading Times...]

I'm mainly confused as to why the BG option wasn't used - in BG you hardly ever get a loading screen when going into a building - you will when you transition map areas however.   A shame we can't get the same functionality   The auto-save per load transition would make a lot more sense too. 

 

Unfortunate

 

 

For my part I'm on 5  year old hardware and a non-SSD and my loading times aren't extreme.   Of course.... I *do* remember having to constantly switch floppy disks, so maybe my concept of time is off. 

[Remember "with objective XP no one will do combat anymore, all enemies will be avoided"?]

Act II is quite long, and most people don't play more than like 15-20 hours of their games.  Actually finishing the game is generally only done by like 20% (at the most) players. 

[How did Engwithan die out]

Oh I've finished it - but nobody really said "and so the engwithans were gone" etc etc.   They could've just as easily used some slave's souls or some random others to collect the souls - maybe a great squirrel purge, since *everything* has a soul in this setting.   Or the Engwithans (or subjects) who inhabited the Dyrwood since they obviously built those machines and used them probably lol.  But the Engwithans themselves were a world wide thing (ruins deep in Eir Glanfath, Aedyr (a whole other continent) and Valia to the south - as far as I know). 

[How did Engwithan die out]

Nobody really knows - the Engwithans were *all over* the place.  And then they suddenly weren't and that was a long time ago so nobody really knows just how suddenly they weren't lol.  It's a mystery. 

[Remember "with objective XP no one will do combat anymore, all enemies will be avoided"?]

I mean... It's *possible* to get less than 175 kills, but you would have to avoid a *lot* (most) of the side content. 

[Finite supply of camping supplies in the game?]

Merchants restock

[Hour One]

I remember the Civilization 3 manual.  I mean, the Interplay manuals were pretty exceptional, but Civ 3 had a GIANT book lol,  I still haven't read that thing lol. 

[Regarding why 2D CRPGs died out in the first place]

Well katarack, the movie industry has been doing the same thing for a while now.

 

Yeah, you have your tens of millions, and beyond, dollar movies, and then you have lesser budgeted films, but *sometimes* your blockbuster flops, but generally one of those "riskier" films becomes a billion dollar franchise lol. 

 

My personal favorite example, comes from 1977.  Fox had a "sci-fi" budget.  It had decided that this film called Damnation Alley would be their main summer money maker, and another, riskier film, would get second billing despite having a slightly higher budget. 

 

Damnation alley is today mostly forgotten unless you're really into 70's and 80's post apocalyptic films, but that second move - was a silly little film called Star Wars, that they thought was sure to barely break even. 

 

Well.... their gamble on that film sure paid off lol. 

[Lore Questions]

Yeah nobody knows what adra even is - or if it was once growing.

 

The Magran issue, is that she, and the rest of the Gods, wanted to blow up Eothas for his transgression of trying to directly control worldly events.  Woedica wanted to use the Engwithan machines to repower herself, but ti's never *really* established if Woedica and Magran got together to kill Eothas for his transgression, or if Eothas was actually invading so as to stop Woedica's plans - it's just conjecture.  The game could be lying to us . 

[This game is so, so gorgeous]

The odd thing is that a lot of the screenshots prior to release really reminded me of Arcanum for some reason - but once I got in game everything looked *way* crisper.   Maybe my browser is purposefully foiling image quality. 

 

I was really pleased with the look of this game, even trees are *great* looking - Bob Ross quality happy trees all over the place. 

[Hour One]

So, just a tip, because this really irked me too when I first started playing.

 

When you go to cast a spell, if you see little "feet" by the magic spell icon - that means you're out of range where you're currently standing and will need to walk to the target - if that makes the target too close for comfort, you'll have to wait. 

 

You'll need to direct melee characters to the front with purpose.  Did not have problems with charm however. 

 

There actually *is* a blocking mechanic in the game - in the form of attacks of opportunity, if you walk away from a character they get a free, instant swipe.  Only teleporting enemies get to ignore it.  The AI is *very* averse to taking these attacks. 

[The Wheel of Life and Death poll. (problems to explore)]

Maerwald's soul is was an elf and then a human - I think anyways lol.  It's also established that Persoq's soul went into a stag, so souls are in *all* living things apparently and can pass between all of them. 

[Durance]

Durance doesn't always burn himself to death at the end, so it's not even information of any consequence. 

[Choice and Consequence in this game feels....lacking. [Spoilers Galore]]

Yeah I can see a little bit of that.  If one looks through the fallout wiki vs the wiki for this game, the *number* of endings is on par, but the *ways* you get to that are less confusing in this game.  For example, either Junktown ending is generally good, although the Killian ending (what you'd think is the "good" option in the game) is somewhat less good - and even less good with the restored original content lol. 

 

For example with Gilded vale:

 

Kill raedric twice: things are wild, but it survives.

Kill Raedric once: Vampire Raedric kills everybody

Never Kill Raedric: non-vampire Raedric kills everybody

 

However, the endings for defiance bay are *quite* reactive - even simple conversation choices can make a difference and there is a bit of ambiguity in your choices.  I think as it stands right now, a lot of people got roped into the dozens because of the "bug" there or quest structures not being clear enough lol.  But even with the dozens there are small variations based on your conversation choices - which are mostly ambiguous to the player in the moment

 

  

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_Endings?cookieSetup=true  Not everything is filled out yet, but you can see some of your concerns aren't fully realized lol.  Some things are cut and dried, but there's a lot of reactivity in there - and a few mysteries lol. 

 

I would say the tower is a bit of an ambiguity, since when you first come across it, chances are, you have no idea what it does - I was tempted to simply shut it off, thinking it may be valuable for some other purpose, but ultimately decided to destroy it because it clearly caused bad things to happen, and would've been useable by anybody who could speak a dead language. 

 

 

 

The Atheism theme at the end as you've dubbed it is something I don't particularly agree with however.  The point isn't to dwell on the existence or non-existence of God(s) or even that they may've ultimately been made by people.  It's knowing that the Gods are in-fact quite real and quite able to influence events, but were created by somebody - and that such things could be done again.  The Gods of multiple cultures the world over are a legacy from the Engwithans weighing down on everything, and for better or worse, they're here for good more or less - whether you believe in them or not. 

 

I mostly saw it as trying to aggrandize the achievements of the Engwithans.  I mean, they could literally make Gods - and to demonstrate to the player how these empty ruins and this lost civilization still, in many ways, controls the modern society - which has very little understand of who the Engwithans actually were. 

[Please, Please, Please, automate resting in the stronghold]

You dont use camping supplies when you rest at brighthollow - provided you've built yourself the place to sleep. 

[Choice and Consequence in this game feels....lacking. [Spoilers Galore]]

Well, I mean to be fair, how is that different from any other game that ends using title cards? 

 

Arcanum has perhaps the most interesting title cards for the end (since there are ~6 you can get + 3 deleted ones ) as regards the main storyline. 

 

In general you're only going to get 1-3 possible endings for each major area - if they are mentioned at all lol.  In fallout 1 the Hub is (still to this day) glitched and will only give the bad ending 100% of the time, unless you use a fan mod for example. 

 

I was mostly impressed about *how* much stuff came up in the ending at all.  It's fairly rare for the ending to last so long and go over everything. 

 

The companions were another really surprising aspect, because usually it's like 2-3 lines like the ending to an 80's B movie - if the companions are mentioned at all. 

 

My main question here is which game is your baseline for "reactive" story?  What I see from this game is *at least* on par, or beyond, what most of the other games made by these folks (even if you throw in the DA/ME series too just for good measure). 

 

I mean... in BG you don't even get an ending besides a cinematic lol - the same goes basically for Torment as well once you've made your choices (a/b/c).  

[How to start undead Readric quest?]

You can also get the quest by talking to the statue in your keep - she has a few different little stories she tells you throughout the game, and one of them was a letter from Raedric challenging me to a duel - so I went there and slapped him with my leather gloves. 

[Spent well over 20 out of 27 hours playing in Character Creation.. Help!]

I remember when I was younger I replayed the opening segment of BG1 probably 60 or more times.  I had literally hundreds of BG characters.  I was a weirdo.

 

Then a game called Torment came out, and I was so utterly unconcerned with the character creation, I just went ahead and played through the game - and I've never looked back since.  I just make a character, and for better or worse, we're going through the game that way lol. 

 

Usually that means, especially so early in a game, the character is far less than optimal, but that adds to the fun for me for some reason - because you have accidental self-imposed handicaps lol. 

 

My WL2 party was *abysmal* from a PG perspective, but we still beat the game and I had plenty of fun along the way lol. 

 

Then when you replay you can take everything you learned and go ham and do everything *just* so lol. 

[PoE - Sales figures STEAM]

I mean going to KS still isn't a bad idea, you get a nice cash infusion, and you get some folks behind you right from the start to spread "hype" about your game from day 1, and along the whole development process.  It's not a bad deal for the consumer either, since you get the game at a cut rate and a modicum of input during its development phase. 

 

I know I'm going to miss my KS updates from Obsidian . 

[Seems like XP balance is out of whack]

I did top out fairly early, but I did literally every quest I could find lol.  I saved the endless paths for last, and it was still somewhat challenging even for a max level party.

 

I think it may've been the warden's bounties because I saved all of those for last too and just did all them right in a row and gained levels 10-12 lol if I recall properly. 

[(spoiler) About the "morality issues" of the quest « A mother's plea »]

The Xaurips run into this situation a lot - like the first one you meet in the early game who is defending that bit of pottery, and is very ill.  You can just brutally cut him down despite him not really threatening you for his stash or leave him be.  It doesn't seem to change your "disposition" either way though. 

[The Man Who Waits oddities]

I got the "bug" where everybody went hostile to me in both levels of the sanitarium, and I killed all of them - it was a misunderstanding I swear....

[Coppers - Plentiful or Scarce?]

I completed just about everything the game had to offer, and I had around 80k cp left in the bank at the end of the game.

 

Depending on difficulty and your penchant for crafting, the early game money can be kind of tight, and then you'll find yourself having enough money to buy the things you *really* want/need, but not enough to constantly splurge on every shiny bauble you find. 

[What was your ending and how did you get it?]

In act III raedric turns into a vampire - you'll notice because your keep should get attacked by the undead a few times - if you talk to the statue she'll tell you he's send you an "invitation" to fight him.  There's also a villager in the black hound in that will tell you about it sometime in act III.