Katarack21

Or how the warm current from Alaska keeps those of us here in Western Washington from being anywhere near as cold as you'd expect for being this far north.

Fair enough, although Sawyer did say something about there being "further developments" with the phylactery. And you're right, it's all about how the devs deal with it, I just personally feel that it almost always works better narratively if there's at least some sort of explanation, if there's *something* in place to provide a reason. I can work without it, I've played a hell of a lot of games, but it's a strain on the willing suspension. Also, this is one reason that I personally would've preferred they more carefully control the level in PoE 1 and the expansion, and release the sequel with a direct import, full level carry over, and simply directly continue everything. That was, of course, the ideal established in BG2, wasn't it? Every game with imports since has pretty much done it the "delevel" way, and I've always felt that's just because it's easier, not because it's better.

Well, it is not a big deal to me personally, but I do consider games to me more than a stupid entertainment. And as I am interested in storytelling in games (mostly storytelling via gameplay, not in spite of it) having a gameplay mechanic in a game, just because it is always there, is something I will always criticise. Levelling up is a concept that RPG sequels struggle a lot. From the narrative perspective you want to continue your heroes journey, not repeat it. What if watcher had amnesia at the start of PoE2 and you had to relearn everything from PoE1 again. That would be silly. It is a bit how I feel every time i start from lvl1 in sequels. Even if you explain it, its weak. I don't see leveling up as a story progress, only a gameplay progress. The story will continue through the strory not through leveling up. I never thought that rpgs struggle with level-ups from a narrative prespective - only players. I'm perfectly fine with starting at level 1 and it won't mess with my story. If they said that my stronghold was at the White that Wends because they wanted their new story to start from there, that would have been annoying, yes. Yes, but while it's the beginning of Pillar of Eternity 2's story, this isn't the "beginning of the story". Pillars, like BG and Mass Effect, is *one* long narrative with *one* single protagonist telling *one* story, broken up into multiple discrete narrative segments (with time skips etc). This isn't always true of sequels, but it's true in *these* cases. So when you deal with Aloth, Eder, and Pallegina being all newbies in Pillars 2, it's not a case of whether it is or isn't narratively okay for the story to begin in such a way. It's a question of "Why did these incredibly powerful people who worked with me to take out one of the oldest and most powerful ciphers the world has ever known, and who helped to kill one of the most famous and most powerful archmages in existence (whose skull I now carry as a trophy of our achievement together), suddenly change and become unable to kill a squirrel?" Gameplay and story don't *have* to be separate; there's no rule saying that. It's perfectly possible to work gameplay elements into the narrative; even outside of that, it literally only takes five seconds to come up with a bull**** handwave and toss it in, to explain why the characters changed. To not do that--to literally just say "Nope, we're not gonna bother to explain it"....well, that just stinks of lazy storytelling. Pillars isn't Witchers 3; these aren't characters who started out killing archmages and fighting dragons. In game-time, the story takes *months* to unfold; your characters are *actually* gaining skill and power over time, and this is *loosely* reflected in the leveling system. No, it doesn't track in any way exact; but it's a general representation of a gain in skill. That's why you also gain *SKILL* points as you level, and those skill points allow you to interact narratively with the world through the drawn scenes. As you level, you gain more skill; your higher level allows you to have a narrative effect on the world that is increased as your level increases. It's not direct, but it's very much implied that your level reflects an actual rise in skill within the setting of the game. Heck, your *level* is what dictates when the Steward tells you that you are or are not capable of dealing with the Cragholdt Bluffs situation; again, an indirect but clearly implied statement that your level is a reflection of a real increase of skill within the setting. And in the sequel that's just gone in your allies, with no explanation. This isn't jut a gameplay problem; this is a narrative problem, a *story* problem. It creates plotholes when I'm walking around with Concelhauts skull, on the ship that was purchased by the person who told me we're high enough in skill to kill Concelhaut, and both me and the guy who helped me kill him and the two friends who helped us out on that mission are *all* whining about how tough this xaurip is.

Australia isn't "technically" a continent; Australia and surroudning islands are the whole and entire representative of the Australian Continental Plate. It is a continent, whole and entire, in every way. Just as much as North America, or Africa. It's just a *small* continent.

Yeah, narratively those two situations aren't the same. Encountering them for the first time, their level can be *anything* and it makes sense because you don't know what they were up to before you met them. In the second game, not so much. If their level is under max, something has changed and it requires and explanation to make any logical sense.

Considering we already know the ship is our base, and you start with the ship, I don't see this happening. Though I suspect getting to the first main city will be much faster than it was in Eternity 1. I could see the party hitting port at that city after the prologue, perhaps with an Irenicus Lair size path of content before. It certainly would make sense to head straight to that city from Dyrwood and recruit some party members and crew in terms of pacing and narrative. I wouldn't be surprised if the prologue was set in the Dyrwood, you know, Thus The Journey Begins Chapter. And then you end up in Neketaka. This is pretty much exactly what I'm expecting. The ship is both stronghold and main form of transportation throughout the game. You can't wait to get it until halfway through; it's your *main form of transportation throughout the game*. Now, you get other ships later. Better ships. Bigger, more badass, etc. The Defiant is just the one you *start* with.

Closer to Viciona, which has an even stranger fan base that BruceVC is a part of. How so? They've both got white hair, but beyond that I don't see any real similarity. That said, I see even less similarity to Aerie. As stated by somebody earlier in this thread, Pale Elves were explicitly created by Obsidian as the Drow analogues. Much as that makes literally no ****ing sense at all, it remains true. Ydwin is a pale elf, Viconia is a Drow, therefore they already share more similarities then Ydwin and Airie.

Hentai is just porn. It's the word for animated porn, of any or all kinds. Watching anime doesn't mean you watch hentai any more than watching Game of Thrones means you watch Bang Bus; there's about as much connection in that one is a live-action show and the other is live-action porn, as opposed to animated show and animated porn. In Japan hentai is very common because in Japan it's not thought of as anything besides another form of porn. In that culture it's not "ANIMATED porn", it's "PORN that is animated". Most people here who watch anime still jerk off to live-action porn, because that's simply the predominant cultural construct in our society and watching a bunch of TV shows doesn't change that. It's a gradient, of course; like SonicMage said, it's about how far into the subculture and how dedicated to that alternative you go. The person who can only jerk it to animated porn is not the typical person who watches anime just like the person who get's fangs and drinks blood at the night club isn't the typical Anne Rice reader, although of course both of these groups do exist.

That really doesn't make it better. Maybe for you. I like forensic procedural's a hell of a lot more than I like most modern anime, though.

Replayability! ) True enough. But for me, as an older gamer with a busy real-life, I don't get much time for gaming. And there are a lot of good games out there that I want to play. And I'm a chronic re-starter. So the net result is that I don't get to re-play games too often. This is a place where being permanently disabled due to schizophrenia, as much as it almost always sucks, actually gives me an advantage. I game a *lot*...when I'm not actively psychotic or to depressed.

She's a cute, skinny, physically capable female character who is morbid, people think is a little off, and is obsessed with studying corpses. She's not "anime" anything. She's Bones. She is Bones in fantasy tropes. She is Bones *in Eora*.

It isn't that shocking. She has sort of a weird smirk, she is doing an odd pose, etc etc. The other Eternity characters that have had concept images (like Eder) are all standing in fairly natural ways. Many of them don't even have weapons drawn. She is definitely a little more adventurous than the other concepts. 2/3rds have a weapon drawn. Aloth has his back to the "camera". Pallegina is smirking. It's a unique *combination* of traits. It's pure coincidence; they combined some things together from other character art, altered a couple of common outfits in minor ways, and put the combination together to give Ydwin a unique "look". No particular trait is unique, really, except the glasses. The overall combination happens to hit the "schoolgirl fighter" appearance a little and some people took that to immediately mean "anime appearance". Other people got annoyed at them, but took the whole "anime appearance" thing because it's like being told not to think of a white-eyed polar bear; once you're told it, you see it. To suppose that just because you *see* something in a work of art means the work of art is defined as such or was influenced by anything in particular is to say you know something about that object which only the person who created it knows. We'll know if Ydwins appearance was influenced by anime if the designer says it when discussing designing Ydwin. Until then, it's only *you*. It's your perceptions, nothing more. Just because you *see* anime doesn't mean Ydwin's design was influenced in any way by anime; it just means you see anime.

Yes, exactly.

It's more complicated even then that. In Japan, "anime" *just means animation*. Any animation, anywhere. All animation=anime, it's just the word for that. Only in the Western world is the word considered a distinct thing unique to Japan--and even then, not so much; the Korean home-grown anime culture is taking off big-time (I know this because I have a military friend stationed in S. Korea).

Lol I just watched that darksiders 3 trailer for the first time, anyone accusing that thing of being an Anime trope is WELL within their rights. Cartoony looks, ridiculously proportioned, stupid smirk, highly arrogant condescending dialog/tone, the only box she didn't check was boob plate, but her armor was overly elaborate and goofy looking enough. Literally everything you just stated as "clear anime influence"--cartoony looks, ridiculous proportions, stupid smirk, arrogant dialogue, and also boob plates which Fury doesn't include--is also the tick-box for "how to make a Warhammer 40K Adeptus Sororitas character". And are you going to tell me that Warhammer 40K is "anime"?

Dude. Seriously, I haven't said a word to you in pages and you still can't tear yourself away from the need to **** with me. Get a realdoll or something.

Especially for party members, who aren't guaranteed to face a continual supply of xuarips and bandits with which to tide the fanged tyke over in their place, it occurred to me that these aren't questions that I want them to be asking. See, that's why I recommend you keep one party space open for a merc. If they start asking questions, you feed them to something dangerous and hire another merc. The other party members have been around long enough to see this repeatedly, and are smart enough to keep quiet.

FWIW, I think her background is an interesting one, especially the whole 'on the cutting edge of Forensic Science and a coroner ahead of her time' thing. At least that's how I see it. Exactly. I could care less about any anime influence or lack thereof, I find her background interesting and compelling.

"Whether it was a joke or not, it got carried on to the point where people disliked Ydwin." Speak for yourself.

It's not actually particularly flexible. You *have* to have some degree of hybrid DPS/Tank up front and hybrid DPS/CC or DPS/Healing in the back. That's the only set up that works, period. You literally can *not* go with pure builds in either direction; you have to have hybrids of either type in both spots.

Nice! Love those bird hops!

Yes. That is the right word.

... in reality because of the whole robbing a bank thing, or lore-wise because savage killer child? The only possible answer is "yes".

Yeah. That place is great....the *first* time through. Every time thereafter, it sucks serious balls.

If you actually go back to the Pillars 1 Kickstarter posts and look at the Vaillian Republics outfits, what Ydwin is wearing isn't far off. It's not out of place at all; it's just out of place *for the Dyrwood*. It fit's right in with her established background and place of origin.