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Just came here to say I had the same thing happen to me (for the record). I don't know of a fix myself. :/ I suspect this is the game handling issues with how the characters reacted to choices in past. E.g. My choices were to fake-join the RDC and then back out, so that I could join the huana, and Pallegina and Maia never commented on it. Now they both have issues and leave (Pallegina with a letter, Maia with a convo).

Thank you!! I'm glad I'm not a weird one-off case, at least. And thank you for the link!

Just a side note: Thank you for being such an active and responsive member of the forums here, Alex! It's really cool to hear your perspective on lore, writing, etc. as someone that's more involved in the process, and you're pretty open to questions and cool about various opinions. The lore books are written from an in-universe perspective and that of an outsider to boot. Beast of Winter gives us a chance to converse with the parties involved first hand and get a look at how it actually happened thanks to the Watcher gifts. It's not necessarily contradicting, you just have to realize that the stories told about events and the events themselves are not necessarily the same. I mean, in a broader sense, the Pillars story is about identities and the factors that shape them. Engwithans imposed a new order, a new identity through their religion. This order lasted for a time, upheld by the Leaden Key and the structures of power that dominated them, but as humanity develops and wants to forge a new one, the gods struggle to reconcile humanity slowly learning to exist without them and their own centuries-old identity as divine beings essential to the world. So Eothas wants to force the gods and mortals to reconsider and reevaluate their role in the grand scheme of things. He wants to give them the tools to build a new identity, but realizes that he is still clinging to the old notions of godhood and relationship with humanity, so he allows himself to be (apparently) killed, creating a new myth. I'm kind of rambling here, I need to refine this thought. Those are really great points. A large part of what we know comes from subjective sources and perspectives, including the lore books in the universe (that's part of why I like the books in the game), and a lot of themes stem from the stories people and cultures are told or tell.

I haven't played the game for months, but I came back to play the two latest DLC's. After resting while playing Seeker, Slayer, Survivor content, Pallegina gave me her farewell letter, left the party, and appeared in the middle of the sea on the global map. Picture of her: https://imgur.com/a/oXVX7rf Is there a way to avoid or fix this?? I'm hoping other players might know more about this than me. --- For some background/context: I beat the game a few months ago. I had offered an alliance to the Royal Deadfire Company, then backed out when they said their plans to assassinate the Onekaza - which causes a 'shootout' which kills a lot of people and deals a blow to the faction. I allied with the Huana after. Pallegina and Maia didn't have issues (or comments) on this at the time, except that Pallegina understood why I'd side with the Huana.

I'm inherently wary of things like multiplayer and MMOs because it's a strong sign of a developer going in a generic, dumbed down ("streamlined"), mainstream direction. Which usually is a sign that they're going to dump attempts at quality or trying new things. So I'd be against it on those terms. If it didn't affect them or the games, I probably wouldn't play it, but I wouldn't mind that it exists or anything.

There was an explanation, but it got cut in editing and they didn't realize it was an issue until after release. There are a couple posts from the devs on this. Explanation itself: The reincarnation cycle always existed, but the Engwithins modified/rigged it to work the way they wanted. One of the things the modified wheel does is feed the soul pieces kith shed to the gods. But breaking the wheel doesn't fix the original process. As Alex Scokel explained, it is *similar* to installing a dam on a river and then breaking the dam. Breaking the dam doesn't fix the river. So when Eothas breaks the wheel, he is is forcing the gods and kith into the same predicament. Life will cease to exist and the gods will die if they don't fix the cycle. Next part is a bit of speculation - I believe Eothas' intent was to make kith realize what the gods really are (not all powerful and immortal and flawless beings), give kith a choice about whether they want the gods at all, and give them a more equal relationship where the two might have to cooperate together to fix things.

I actually wish the blessings and curses were more like this one. One that *seriously* affects you. I get more why they avoided permanent intense blessings though.

I just realized this. Something interesting about Eothas acting similar to Thaos - and the other gods, and many main characters/playable characters - in his willingness to sacrifice other lives for what he thinks is the greater good, but for inverse reasons. Thaos behaved that way to control kith and how they thought, and maintain the faith of the gods and what they were. Eothas behaved that way to give kith the chance to make a choice to be independent or equal or not, and to completely break what everyone thought about gods. Even his choice to die (the first time) served that. Cool parallels! Both cases really bring up the question of, ethically, how much does method matter versus intent versus consequences. I also think it's interesting how both react when you call them out on their choices.

Wait, you think so? I'm used to people saying it the other way around, but I haven't played DOS 1 or 2.

That sounds like a bug. I've never seen the game do that. However, you can let it happen even if she's there. But I think you might have to kind of be a **** about it.

Stuff like the post above shows the seams of the game a little I think. I don't think it's laziness, more the result of trying to account for so many possible factors in a game they actively made more dynamic. I don't know if I'd say shallow but I do get the frustration actually.

I assume it's because Rymrgand isn't the one in the statue breaking the wheel directly? I haven't read that ending or what happens exactly, so I'm guesstimating.

That is amazing hahaha. The game doesn't know how to handle it.

There is *definitely* set-up for the third game. There are a few constants in every ending that create a problem that kith are being forced to deal with, with no guarantee they can actually handle it, there are multiple points in the game that discuss and ask about how the cycle of souls work and what animancers are learning, and all of the aforementioned set up ties into one of the major themes/questions in both PoE I and II. That said, Obsidian could probably end the series here if they wanted. Deadfire did a good job of making an ending that closed most of the threads and gave you an idea of what the future is, while still keeping it open enough that there is serious potential for a third game's story. I'm hoping they make a solid (not stripped down) third game that follows up on all of this though. The stuff they brought up was a really cool follow up on the last game's ideas and offered some really cool possibilities for the next one.

Gifted mentioned this, but I thought there was already a thing that essentially slips narration? Like a space bar? Maybe that's the last game /just the BG style stuff? I was actually going to post some sort of grumpy reply like: Yeah, the narrator is a speaker like any other character, the game would need to run a test against every line of dialogue to... blah... blah... and then I poked around the binary a bit. The game already does specifically test and handle narration differently. It really is just a single if/then and fancy button away from redirecting (almost) all calls for narration off to a null. The caveat is that there are still something like 100-200 pieces of dialogue which include narration, but are owned by a different speaker. Any time you come across something like: [sNARKY GOD]: "FI FI FO FUM, I SMELL A WATCHER... AND... VATNIR? SERIOUSLY. TAKE A BATH, DUDE." You swear his lips remained motionless, but the weight of the reverberating sarcasm brings you to your knees. that is all a single piece of text and single audio file owned by [GOD]. Splitting it apart would mean inserting a new dialogue node for just the narration and cutting the audio into two pieces. There's no easy coding fix to address those instances, and would require a moderate level of rework. But as I mentioned before, there is a relatively quick thing you can try. Just dig through your install to find: StreamingAssets/Audio/[platform]/Voices/English\(US\)/narrator Renaming/deleting that single directory will cut out any audio where only the narrator speaks. That accounts for something over 80% of her total lines. The mod on Nexus took a more complicated approach to achieve the same effect, but the audio subsystem is fairly resilient, and doesn't appear to get too upset when it simply can't find a piece of VO. Side note, but I always love the code /mod posts you do on this stuff. It's neat to read how it works.