Yonjuro

Spoilers ahead. I also really like what they did with the Huana culture. It is just vile. The Roparu are a permanent slave class. They are required to give everything to the head of the tribe who distributes it in a way that enforces the existing unfair social order. The devs could have done a Rent Seekers oppress the Nobel Native thing, but they did something nuanced instead.

Now there is some out of the box thinking. Well done. I wonder if there a high enough stealth level would make this possible....

Yes. It would be nice to at least have that as an option if you can't find a painted portrait that you like.

There a tech support sub forum (below this one (General Discussion) on the forum list). You will have better luck posting the bug there because the developers are more likely to see it.

I know. They always go goth at that age. Watcher: Vela - be good ....and I'll take you bounty hunting. See, I've got a whole list here. Ogres and everything. Vela: Watcher: That's my girl.

Good point. In PoE 3 she will be a teenager... Hmm, I didn't know I wanted that in the next game until this very moment. Vela: You're not my real parent. You abducted me! Watcher: Vela we lived in a castle and then on a pirate ship, so quit complaining. Vela: mumble, ok, that part WAS awesome, I guess - but I'm still not cleaning my room

He'll pick up anything cute and fluffy and the rest of us have to live with the consequences. (This whole thread practically writes itself.)

The game might just not be your cup of tea, but you can win the ship battles fairly early on, especially if you buy a few upgrades. There are a few good threads about how to win the ship battles if you ever want to give them another go and you always have the option to board and fight on deck in the usual way.

Yeah, but they're only young once. Enjoy it while it lasts. These are the wonder years.

I know. Watcher, my ***. How about - watch your kid? Oh, and don't get me started about raising your kid on a pirate ship... Yea, living on a pirate ship is...tight. Btw, does she sleep in captain's quarters? Cuz if she is I think I know what the Watcher actually teaches her with all those romance hungry companions coming to visit Watcher: Vela, you have the next watch - get up in the crows nest! Vela: (Muttering) you're supposed to be the watcher ...

Yeah, and now you have a drug addled orlan child to raise all by yourself (no, your pirate crew doesn't count as a mother figure). I hope you're happy.

It can't be worse than carrying her in your bag in the final event of WM Part 2. Yes, this whole child abduction thing has so many pitfalls. Who knew?

I know. Watcher, my ***. How about - watch your kid? Oh, and don't get me started about raising your kid on a pirate ship...

They're all hiding from you. They know it won't end well for them.

I like the ones that are tied to quests. It is more personal - this group was looking for you - yes, you. They aren't just mugging all of the passers by (except that group in the gullet who runs away if you say pretty much anything to them - also a fun encounter). YMMV, of course.

Uhh, Sarevok did have an American accent. Very American, in fact. Several of the major characters in BG1&2 had American accents. Some of the actors used unusual prosody (stress, rhythm etc.) with an American accent to make the character sound interesting.

That's pretty much it - it mostly comes down to the quality of voice acting. Other than that, there are a few things that can go wrong. One is that if an accent is strongly regional or identifiable, it will carry whatever associations that accent has for the listener. For example, if a character in Deadfire was channeling Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter (that is, a strong Australian accent), that would have an effect, probably a bad (or, at least, comedic) one for most Americans whereas, for an Australian it might sound fine (especially if everybody in the game had Australian accents). On the flip side, if an accent is unidentifiable, either completely made up or just done poorly, that can be distracting. The best (or, perhaps, worst) example I can think of is when call centers in India tried to train representatives to speak with an American accent. The result was often completely unintelligible whereas, if they had spoken in their own South Asian English accent, it would usually have been fine. I don't know what conclusion we can really draw except that voice acting is easy to get wrong, sometimes because it's bad and other times because it reminds some of the listeners of things that are unrelated to the game.

Containers that have the usual pointer icon when you mouse over them doesn't count as theft and you can take from them in plain sight. The ones that count as theft have a different icon. When they have the other icon, You can disarm the trapped containers and unlock them and then you can steal using stealth - the character doing the stealing has to not have been discovered (that is, can't have a red circle with eye symbol in the middle under them). Sleight of hand is not necessary. I'm not sure about your other questions about stealth, but if you plan to steal everything, it's probably worth giving your thieving character as high stealth as you can. There may be an upper limit on stealth that you need to steal everything in the game, but I don't know what it is. For combat, the abilities that allow your melee characters to close the distance fast makes stealth less important (monks, fighters and barbarians can all take abilities to do this). So, you may want to factor that in.

See log entry 11.

I think it worked (for me). The music set a mood, but didn't stand out (it's like the Funk Bros. showcasing the voice talent at Motown - except that it showcases the game play instead of Martha and the Vandellas - wow, there's an analogy stretched to its breaking point). One more thumbs up for the sea shanties.

What's the right answer to that? I think I'd go with "yeah, you gotta problem with that" or maybe "yes, of course, stop harshing our buzz"? We may need a poll to pick the optimal response to such insightful cultural criticism. No, I said "poll."

Yes, planning for PoE5 starts now.... err, I mean 3, PoE3. The systems are solid and the combat has a good feel to it. Other that re-balancing the higher difficulties, I would be happy to see another game with these systems. The classes and multi class system is surprisingly solid considering how big of a change it was. I look forward to trying out some interesting builds with it. I enjoyed the ship combat more than I thought I would (I had never considered a career in piracy - sigh, missed opportunities) and I like that the option to board is always there. I would be happy to revisit the Deadfire, but there is also a lot more of the world so, maybe we'll get back to the Deadfire by PoE7 or so. However it goes, I'm going to need another piracy opportunity in the future. The companion relationship system is promising. The only issue was that there wasn't quite enough of it. I would like to see the relationships develop more over the course of the game (I had exhausted the possibilities fairly early in my play through and the NPCs didn't have any more to say). I would like to see more of the watcher story. I promise to suspend disbelief at restarting at level 1 if the devs promise not to murder my watcher between every game. I think the writing has improved from PoE1 to White March to Deadfire. For me, a personal story and interesting companion characters are a big part of what makes a game good.

True. If you weren't generic minion number 17 in a previous life but rather, someone with a significant connection, that would have worked better.

I think the cast of characters is what saved it for me too. I wasn't really drawn into the story - possibly because events that happened in a previous life don't work as a personal motivation (?).

Same here... the world and writing are just sooo... meh. I never got into the Divinity series, even the old games, and the "humor"? Yes, the humor. Oh, how whimsical. Oh, how whimsical. .... Oh, how annoying. Maybe if the story and characters had been more compelling, the humor would have worked better, but as it is, no - not for me anyway.