anameforobsidian

This. How about a Bleak Walker companion. The class and morality have companion written all over them.

I played it at hard as my PotD playthrough isn't at the right level yet, and it's not a faceroll. That's pretty good considering.

I agree that Vatnir is also a bit of a wasted opportunity. He's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but he could use a full story in the DLC not just a few lines. I hope they add at least one companion in the DLCs, preferably two. My wife hates Xoti, and the returning characters have less room to grow, because they already grew. The DLC has some fun moments for Eder. I'll take Xoti and Takehu next, because I suspect they'll have some cool stuff to say. I cheesed this through wall of colors. You can either do it out of combat or in combat with something easy. It took about 20 minutes to do. The items are pretty cool though. I have Eder decked out with a frost shield and frost scimitar.

Holy Crown Solo sounds damn near impossible. How many players got TCS? 500? 1000? I bet the no pausing alone will drop that into a hundred or less unless we find an incredibly broken build that isn't balanced out of existence or find a way to complete it without combat. I say this as a proud TCS completionist.

In both of my saves I've had the little status affliction pop-ups stay around after combat is over. It goes away with a game restart but not a reload. Sorry if this has been posted before.

By the time you play the Ascension mod, you're expected to know how to cheese the game a bit. The final fight really isn't that bad, given the knowledge of cheese. Giving everyone rods of resurrection made the fight more manageable for me. I agree that Baldur's Gate II is currently better than PE II. We'll see after the DLC. Right now PE II kicks the pants off of every other RPG revival game I've played, and most other isometric games. The system is mature; the graphics are beautiful; the world well-realized (better so than BG); the characters are complex. The only thing it really needs is some other, more alien towns. I think Ust Natha is just as important to BGII as Amn, because it provides a rich counterpoint. I wasn't expecting this game to beat what I consider the best game of all time, but I have enjoyed my time in it heartily.

Darker than coming into a town with a giant hanging tree? Grittier than having a kid killed for protecting prostitutes from a gang? More mature than Renaissance Italian style plays made in game? I'm not sure we've been playing the same series. P.S. Chris Avellone said that both of his characters and ideas were heavily rewritten by the narrative lead.

Since Deadfire hasn't had a wide range of sales it's even easier to see how much it made. 171k people bought it new or barely discounted on steam. Steam takes it's 30%. So in revenue it got at least ($42.5*171k*.7) - (whatever they paid to critical role). So that's $5m in revenue not counting critical role or taxes. If no copies were bought during the sale, that goes up to $6M. You can add that to $4.4m from Fig.

Ninjad by a lot. I should read.

Due to the steam link we now know (as of July 1st) the total players on steam. Obsidian Games FNV - 5.2m / 690k (listed twice) Southpark Stick of Truth - 2.5m Pillars - 1.2m Dungeon Siege 3 - 638k Pillars 2 - 203k Tyranny - 562k Similar Games D:OS - (Classic 1.2m, Enhanced 1.5m) D:OS 2 - 1.68m Wasteland 2 - 626k TToN - 206k BG: EE - 745k BG II: EE 420k SR: Dragonfall - 530k SR: HK - 268k BattleTech - 289k Banner Saga I/II - 747k, 154k I just thought this information was interesting.

Except for the enchanted grimoires and the grimoires with unique spells. I keep meaning to try the spell that turns your hands into snakes, but I always equip Ningauth's instead.

I could be wrong, but I unhooded the person and it was Wael; however, I dispersed the souls at the end of Pillars 1. It could be that the shrines have different outcomes depending on who you favored.

I didn't like Wael as much this time around. In the first one, I though of Wael as the god of secrets and revelations. Wael creates mysteries so that people can follow the mysteries and learn more. So in Pillars 1, scattering the souls was an act of insurrection; this would inspire people to look for what happened to the souls, which would in turn lead them to secrets about the Gods / Engwithans. This seemed to fit with his book behavior; rather than destroying a book, you hide it for others to find. In Pillars 2, his behavior was far more callow, and focused on maintaining secrets. If he was just focused on secrets, there's little difference between him and Ondra.

This is the nature of open world RPGs and always has been. Fallout 1 literally threatens to kill all the npcs if you don't follow the main plot. Fallout 2 has you go what, three mandatory places and then an endgame dungeon. Skyrim's quest has almost nothing to do with the other quests in the game, and is a tiny portion of the amount of time you can spend in the game. There's a trade off between linearity and open worlds; I suspect that the only way to solve it is by throwing tons of money at the problem. And Baldur's Gate, well... I think the Baldur's Gate series were some of the best rpgs, but I think people are remembering them poorly: BG I: "My father's dead. I should probably investigate anomalous metallurgy." The hook getting you to Nashkel was particularly weak. BG II: "Hey you, get 20,000 gold! Here's the first 3/4s of the content, do whatever you want." I tried using that hook in a pnp campaign and the players were mutinous. I wasn't exactly hurrying to rescue Imoen; I killed two dragons, an elder brain, several liches, and a demilich before getting to her the first time. The point here is that the sidequests weren't integrated at all into the main story; that's why they're sidequests. The reason Baldur's Gate II succeeds is that it's so massive there's enough space to have two quite large games in there.

It's significantly bigger and more complex than Pillars. It feels like there are a lot more small dungeons. Neketaka is much bigger and has much more sidequests than Defiance Bay. The factions are bigger and their quests go with you until the end game; you can also do all of their quests up till the last one. There are arguably five factions (Rauatai, Valians, Huana, Principi traditionalists, New Principi). There are smaller factions, but they're not nearly as developed as the ones in New Vegas. Wouldn't know about bad guy play, but my guess is it turns some PCs off, but as long as you're not a murderhobo you probably won't lose that much.

I'd like some more options in estocs, even though they're not exactly an optimal weapon. I've had to buy most of mine.

While I think parts of the old game were better (health system), in general I love this game. They did a great job with the content.

Omg this. Everything is so visually bland and boring now. What happened to Cipher's "lightsaber" from PoE 1? That was awesome. There were lots of complaints about this kind of stuff especially. A lot of people thought it made it hard to see what was going on.

I love monstrous companions. I'd like a Xaurip sidekick especially. It doesn't have to talk. Dragon Age had a dog as a sidekick, and I thought it did pretty well. A Lagufeth could perform a similar role, but probably not as interestingly. An Ogre would be great narratively, especially for a more evil party. they would have to remake some parts of the game because an ogre might not fit. You could have a disgraced matron who wants to go back to their tribe only to find they've massacred each other. A vithrack would be interesting, and we see them here and there in the Deadfire. The vithrack are a great species that I would always like to see more of. A vithrack spider ranger would be especially cool and creepy. A Naga companion would also be interesting, especially if you go to the dungeon that talks about the origin of the Naga. All in all, I think Deadfire has better content than base-pillars. However I'm disappointed they haven't graphically expanded the player. They should have added Godlikes, priests of different aspects of the Gods, new ranger companions, or druid forms. It would allow them to tell weirder, braver stories.

I've been pretty disappointed in my estoc on hard. Lots of enemies aren't affected by it; the damage isn't that great, and finding new ones is very, very difficult compared to swords or sabres. I jumped from a fine estoc (which I had to buy) to a superb estoc (which I also had to buy). I would have switched to another weapon if I wasn't a Devoted.

I want to play a cipher melee dual class. I'll probably go psyblade / favored blade. Barbarian / cipher looks attractive as well, especially if carnage builds focus. Still think I'll go for the psyblade though.

I'm not looking forward to patches! (But I'm looking forward to the rest of the game.)

Makes sense, after all they have a reputation to fight. But it's going to delay my second play.

Pillars is just a combat heavy game. The dungeons in White March provided more atmosphere, better told lore, one of the few low-combat dungeons in the game, and had a neat plot. They also did a much better job setting up unique fights and monsters than the base game: kobold ambush, vithrack thrall rush, random ice vampires, geiger hammermen. If you reach it for the middle of the game you also notice that the loot is generally more interesting and has more easily understood power than the base game; stormcaller in particular makes a heck of an impression.

I'll just put cRPGs as series. Baldur's Gate Series Planescape Torment Arcanum Gothic / Risen series Fallout Series (including NV of the new ones) NWN II Geneforge Series Pillars Avernum Series Honorable Hybrids: Diablo, FF6/7, Chronotrigger, STALKER, Terranigma, Deus Ex, VTMB.