Harry Easter

Hmm, not bad at all. Put Skaen into the mix and you could create a game around the themes "secrets and intrigue" with Ondra, Skaen and Wael fighting for secrets. Ondra wants to keep them, Wael wants to spread them just for fun and Skaen wants to use them for his nefarious schemes (for example getting rid of Woedica and then getting his Revenge on, well, every one. New God of Revenge and all that). I like that.

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition. The Original came out two years ago, but I still love playing this game. It has the kind of interactivity I only find in Fallout 2 and Arcanum, but it does some things better than those games. The battles for example. And it has found a nice solution for the pacing problem of those games: it turns the story into a treasure hunt, which makes it necessary to explore the world. A fitting device for the plot too.

Hmm, this is actually not a bad idea. Question is, would the gods be reborn in mortal bodies and wouldn't it be better, if you use this twist as the premise for the third game?

I actually had a good time with AoD, but I think it had balancing issues. The XP you got for solved Quests weren't enough and the skillchecks to high. I did everything I could, but my Praetor was never able to reach his goals, not because I played BAD, but because I didn't got enough XP or at least another option. The first city was actually the best part in the game. Maybe they could have build the story solely around this placing, instead of blowing all their grand ideas in the beginning. The world had potential for a lot more stories or even a bigger game, if they had the budget.

I replayed PoE with White March over the course of the last week and now I got a few ideas, how the story could continue. I organised my thoughts in a few topics. 1: What do we know since the end of PoE 1? The gods are manmade, petty and it is possible to kill them. They can have bodies, but also reincarnate (see Abydon) and Eothas candles never went out. So there is a possibility that the god of light will be back, which could be the mainfocus of PoE 2. 2: Why is that? Since Waidens legacy was the biggest subplot in PoE, it would be one of many reasons that this story will be the focus of the main game. And if I understood it right, gods have also souls, so maybe parts of Eothas' survived. They could have wandered around, until they were reborn in kith bodies or they still fly through the ether and are drawn to Readceras, because the people there still wait for the return of their god. Readceras ist a different setting than Dyrwood. Where the dyrwoodians were stubborn and freedomloving, the readcerasians are obedient and are more concerned about their place in society, than their rights as an individual. They are also slaveholders, which also could be an interesting aspect of their society, where structure is everything. They want their lord and savior back and I don't think that the Aedyran empire forgott about it's old colony. So the story could be about order and the consequences for a culture, that has build their nation around the ideas of one person. 3. How does the player fit into the game? If we play the Watcher from PoE 1 I could imagine that they would try to investigate Eothas rise to power, so they may learn more about the gods and how to kill them. I can't imagine that the other gods would leave us alone after everything we found out in PoE and White March. Maybe we could also try to resurrect Eothas to gain a powerful ally who would try to get his revenge, after the treason of Magran. Maybe we meet some prophets who have splinters of Eothas soul in them and claim to be the real deal, so we have to choose which one is the best/not the worst candidate for the new god of light. Or we actually ARE one of those prophets and we could become the new Eothas. That's just the first raw thoughts.

I think this shows how ambivalent the gods really are. They stand for eternal principles, but they are still their own creatures. They are powerful, but not wise. They make mistakes, don't talk to each other, believe to be above everything, but actually they are petty and cruel. They want to use their power, but hate their bounds, so that's why they kill some of their own (Eothas and Abydon)while still trying to preserve parts of them, because the ideas they represent give them power about people. Maybe the White March was the beginning of the end and over the course of further installments we will see how they try to kill each other off, because nothing is eternal, even the gods. So everything could fit, but we have to wait for PoE 2.

Hmm, I always thought, that Magran killed Eothas for power. It strenghtened her position in Dyrwood and destroyed the competition for the position as the most powerful god. Since the Dyrwoodians praise her if you choose to strengthen Dyrwood with the souls, she is the one that wins the most. Of course she gambles a lot, but even a returning Woedica could be just a worthy foe for her to defeat. She is tactical war, after all. She will win, no matter the cost. To be honest, I can see her as the real nemesis for future installments, since Woedica doesn't seem to be the brightest lightbulb without Skaen intriguing for her. And I wouldn't count on Skaen, because, well, he is a bastard. The god of bastards.

The whole Gilded Vale - Questline. It was a niece build-up to the rest of the story, but it also stood out as a standalone-campaign. I would liked to be the lord of Raedrics Hold myself. Most of the companions-quest. The end of White March, because it showed how ambivalent and controling the gods really are. All of Twin Elms. This is why I love fantasy. It is an exotic location, that still feels real enough and the quests are well written and thematically adjusted to the rest of the story. Defiance Bay was a bit weak, but Twin Elms is always fun. The conversation with Iovara. You only talk once with her, but the emotional impact of this one conversation is enormous.

Again: D'awww. They really like him^^.

The first sentence made my day^^. Sometimes I like to wonder, if the relationship the group hast to Durance, reflects a bit the relationship, the other writers had to Chris Avellone. Probably not, since he seems to be a nice guy. Didn't remember this dialogue. Still: D'aww^^.

1) Yes. Just choose godlike and then your second race. 2) You have three heads and two portraits for each Godlike. They are the same heads and faces for every race. Just take a look. Personally I prefer Death Godlikes .

Yes!

Well, that's why I think he cares so much about the watcher. I always had the feeling, that the relationship between him and the watcher ist closest, you get for a best friend. And when he warms up, they group sttarts to like him. They like him more than Durance .

And on which part, you wouldn't ? If you are religious and clever, you could argue that Thaos is actually an evil atheist AND a unworthy pagan with manmade, false gods. Because in the end Woedica is more HIS tool, than he is hers. He chooses to obey her, because he controls her, not the other way around. He is the arrogant man, that wants to be more, than he is. Yes, they are mostly ****, if you don't count Hylea (although you could discuss how NICE she really is) and Abydon (no complaints about him. He's just a working class dude, with a big hammer). It's possible that they will kill each other off or that Magran will become the new queen of gods. I mean, you are a goddess war, you have to conquer something^^. He has to be the most depressed person in the world. Not for his lack of loved ones (you don't live for 2000 years, if you don't learn to not to care about anyone after a while, I would argue), but because of the futileness of his quest. He can give everything he has, he will fail. Seriously, sending him back to the wheel was the nicest I ever could have done to him.

Well, iIrc, it was more like diarrhea. So you could say, it was just a joke from the developers, to get you into the tutorial.

I Agree on most, although I did find GM interesting at first. It is just that she seems so centered on the hollowborn crisis that she feels somewhat one-note, and the lack of interaction with party members do not help. However, I've felt she is genuinely unnerving and scary, specially with how there is no way to be sure how much influence her power has over the Watcher, or if she is the master of her illusions or a slave to them. If they played this angle better, I feel I would give her another try. Those are good points and would be really interesting to exploit. Maybe in an even more horror-themed game? I mean, we already have ghosts andd Vampires, so why don't add an real horrorcastle ?

Huh, interesting idea. I also thought, that the whole pantheon was created there and that every Engwithian alive (or at least at the side) gave their life for creating the gods. But if Infinitron is right, it would make more sense. But I don't think, that Woedica was trapped there. It was just her birthplace, where she got her powers and Thaos wanted to repeat the success of the first time. And after the creation Thaos founded the inquisition,so everyone knew, that there were only these gods and no other. Kudos for them, that they were already very powerful from the beginning. But I woud really like to know, if there still exist other gods, or if the actual pantheon did consume every existing god of the world, so that they are really the lords of existence.

Godlike of Death, Dwarves as family, Paladin of the Kind Wayfarers, from Old Vailia. It was fun^^.

My thoughts on the companions. Favorites at the top, least favorite at the bottom. 1) Aloth: He is stiff, he is ankward, he is the best friend of my character. Everyone loves Éder, but I think the relationship between him and the character is the deepest we can have in the game. It does help, that he is the first one we can recruit of the maincast. And I like, how he learned to trust us in the end and that he has your back, no matter what. 2) Sagani: The second best friend, you can have in the game. Very relaxed and I had always the feeling that she, besides Aloth, opens the most to your character and that you know at the end a lot more about her as person and not only about her backstory. Sagani is cool. 3) Éder: The big brother of the group, who holds everyone together. Also he is funny. His "we blow him up!" cracks me up everytime. 4) Pallegina: She is a good colleague and I can respect her for her work-ethos. And while she isn't the warmest person in the world, she does have a good heart and a sense of right and wrong, that makes me like her. 5) Durance: He is a jerk. But a jerk with an interesting backstory. I hate him, but I can understand why he became the crazy hobo, he is now. And at least his personality is colorfoul enough, to be one of a kind. A one of a kind jerk. 6) Kana: Kana is okay. He is nice. And a good sharpshooter. 7) Grieving Mother: Does only speak colorfoul crazy and was so high concept, that she was ultimately boring. Kind of sad, because Avellone can write. And no, I don't think that she would be more interesting, if Obsidian didn't cut out a lot of her content. 8 ) Hiravias: Your little, horny brother, that annoys everyone. At least Grieving Mother was bareable, even if she only talked on drugs. Hiravias has no excuse. Companions of the Expansions: Don't know any of them, yet.

Hmm, well maybe if you think like your class. For example, my dwarven paladin HAS to help everybody and will always suffer, if he can something good. In Twin Elms later you can woork against the urgency, because it could be good to choose your god wisely. In Defiance Bay, because maybe you find something useful in the archives (that's why I'm helping everybody) and in Gilded Vale, because people suffer, so I have to stop the feud between Raedric and the rebels.

In case of Thaos you could say, that another theme of the game was "you can't stop time/change". At the end Thaos was not only afraid of the end of the kin, he was afraid of this new world, the world it could become through Animancy. The gods were created because the Engwithians wanted a world were some kind of definitive order exists. A world with concrete rules and concepts of morale, the kind of concepts the gods provided. But even the gods aren't eternal: Woedica isn't the queen of gods anymore, Eothas is dead, Abydon was reborn as a golem, Skaen had a portfolio stolen by Woedica etc. I always found that Twin Elms was the strongest aspect of the story, because now we not only just worked with the gods, we were confronted with the concepts they represent, in a world where you are constantly reborn and no real afterlife seems to exists. We didn't choose a god, we choose which philosophy fitted best for us or our character. The only things that seems to be constant in this worlds is to be reborn and you having to choose how you want to spend your life. Still believing, even if you know that your god seems to be death? Can do (Éder). Fighting the good fight, because you think it is the right way? Aloth will do it, even if it kills him to fight the leaden key. And was your journey really pointless, when the person you were looking was dead? Ask Sagani, maybe she has an answer. It's how you choose to spend your life what is important. The will of the kin is maybe greater than they give themselve credit for, the creation of the gods could be actually the greatest sign of this. Even if they were born out of desperation and a very pessimistic view of the world, they show that the will CAN change the world. Everyone has to die one day. You, Thaos, and it is fair to assume, that the gods will also finally die. But it is for you to decide, how much it was worth it. That's what I took at least away from the game and why my character (Deathgodlike/Paladin/Dwarfish parents) choose to give the souls back to the children of Dyrwood. So they have at least a chance to choose. That's why I also got Thaos back into the wheel and because it didn't matter in the end. I am an Atheist, but I think those conclusion are worthwhile for people like me and spiritual people, as long as you don't really think that here is big order in the universe or there has to be one. Or if you think that punishment is more important than mercy.