Mallard

I want to believe.

Sci-fi missed out on the isometric RTwP games of the late 90s/early 2000s. I know we have Fallout and KOTOR and Mass Effect, but I'm talking specifically about isometric RTwP games like Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/PST. A sci-fi (rather than post-apoc) setting: traversing the stars in your own starship, exploring new planets on a galaxy map, beaming down to the surface with an away team... I would love to see Obsidian try their hand at this -- using all the lessons they learned from managing a vessel in this game, we could get a Baldur's Gate-style version of Mass Effect or Star Trek/Wars/Craft.

Hi wesblackb, for what it's worth I understand where you're coming from. I am part of a minority that would be happy to play an RPG with no combat system. You might want to check out Tides of Numenera if you haven't already, since the combat there is (mostly) avoidable. Since you already have cheats enabled I'm not sure that the combat can be streamlined any more... That said, pressing F11 on your keyboard gives you access to a debug menu. Among other things, that lets you instantly travel to any location. Good luck with your game, in any case!

The moment Berath placed a chime/silver sword shard/piece of Voldemort's soul inside of me, I had suspicions. I was certain that the chime would have some secret effect on the story -- absorbing the souls who so naively decided to follow Berath's herald, for instance. I was certain that the chime, once strengthened from having absorbed enough souls, would be ready to reveal its true purpose: It was a new 'Godhammer' bomb, one specifically designed to destroy Eothas in his new body. Berath simply wanted the Watcher to get close enough to set off this suicide bomb. Or perhaps it was meant to absorb Eothas' essence into itself, as well -- all part of a plan to empower Berath. Anyway, I can't be the only one who was suspicious of Berath's motivations throughout the game. Some other ideas that went through my mind: - I never did understand how, or why, Eothas reformed at the specific place and time that he did. Was it even his decision, or did Woedica or Berath direct it behind the scenes? - The reasons for choosing a giant statue seem obvious -- unstoppable, apparently indestructible... But how did Eothas know about the statue? Did he have some connection to Od Nua? My guess is that, like the Great Sphinx, the statue of Maros Nua is a "Wonder of the World" that was known to all the gods. - At first, I was suspicious if the being inhabitting the statue even *was* Eothas. How could we be sure it was not an imposter? (like Thaos, perhaps, his soul being stitched back together by Woedica if you destroyed it in the first game) - I am confused as to how Eothas was able to remove the chime -- since it belonged to Berath, not him. Are the gods able to "undo" one another's work without incident? - Back to Berath: For a god whose duality is constantly emphasized, "she" spoke to me entirely in the form of the Pallid Knight. Why? When I first began the game, I had a theory -- it was not actually Berath. The "Pallid Knight" was Woedica in disguise and the "Usher" was Skaen in disguise. - Did anyone else have a suspicion that Xoti was not all that she seemed? Her bubbly personality didn't mesh with her god of worship, nor specifically with her desire to collect souls in her lantern. I was convinced her lantern was not what it seemed. I wondered if she was planning to betray me from the start -- this game's version of Yoshimo. Her lantern was perhaps meant to prevent Berath from obtain the souls. - Before the game was released, by prediction for Eothas' reason for returning was: He was planning to construct a new Godhammer himself, to use against Woedica or Magran or Berath. -------- In retrospect, none of my predictions came true. What were some of your theories, before finishing the game?

Actually, I just realized - Rymrgand's aurochs skeleton should have immediately been noticable..,if it even fit in an alcove. - What form would Wael's skeleton take, or Ondra's? - I seem to recall from the first game that Hylea does not take physical form, but clearly she is humanoid in the sequel

There are 11 alcoves, corresponding to the 11 gods. 3 of the alcoves are empty. 1 of those 3 is clearly Abydon. That leaves 2 unknowns with 10 candidates. Assuming it is Woedica who laments giving up her body, we can rule her out. That leaves 9 candidates. Since Eothas possesses a statue rather than his own body, I would guess we can rule him out. That leaves 8 candidates. Given Skaen's trickery, and the very prominence of a physical body in his worship (disfigurement as the effigy), my personal guess is that he is one of the 2.

While the final area of a long, complex CRPG can often feel rushed and empty, there is a bit more going on with Deadfire. Certain plot bombshells are dropped towards the end of the game, which would seem to directly contradict well-established lore from the first game. I love the game and want it to succeed, but I cannot deny that many passionate fans are unable to agree if/how the first game has been retconned. Whatever else Obsidian wanted from the story, they certainly have inspired fierce debate -- nobody can agree on anything. Josh Sawyer has acknowledged that these bombshells had more detailed explanations in dialogue, but such dialogue was trimmed towards the end of development. I imagine the devs and programmers have their hands full with bugfixing and the new DLCs...nonetheless, it might go a long way to improving the game -- and community -- if some sort of "extended cut" or "restored content" were made available. Whether that would take the form of a free DLC, or would be divided among the upcoming 3 paid DLC, is something that would have to be determined. I don't think they should attach a "restored" ending to an after-game purchase, though

Appreciate the responses, good points on both sides. To clarify, these are some of the attributes of the random combat encounters I had in mind: - introduction of more loading screens (world map to combat arena, then back to world map, this was a problem in NWN2: SoZ) - unavoidable (no option to sneak/bribe/negotiate out, say in a world map text interaction) - boring and unoriginal (e.g. xaurips and bandits, as Big Ben mentioned; probably langufath on some islands) I certainly have no problem with the random ship crew interactions. Quite the opposite, as I mentioned: I would love to see more ship crew text interactions, like in Oregon Trail and Banner Saga! I also loved the text-based encounters when changing districts in Neketaka.

If you've played Final Fantasy I-IX or other JRPGs, you know what I'm talking about... You're walking along... WHOOSH-WHOOSH!!!!!!!! Ambush! I mean, a good player grits their teeth and uses it to level up, but still...I came to loathe that sound. This game seems to have based world map random encounters on Betrayal at Krondor: well-written text interactions. I never get tired of them, even if I wish there was more variety. So a huge shout-out to the devs for this decision. Please stick to it for the future!

So what you're saying is that you want this pirate-themed game to implement an "eye patch". (sorry, couldn't resist)

I'm from Scarborough, which a district in Toronto, Canada. Here in Canada, Toronto is defined to be the center of the known universe...

I'm sorry for the necro, but with the imminent release of Deadfire ("Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire", to be exact), this topic has been on my mind. The Baldur's Gate series had a clear subtitle format for BG1XP, BG2, and BG2XP: "X of Y". And the title "Tales of the Sword Coast" more or less described the base Baldur's Gate campaign as well as the expansion. Thus the entire series could be viewed as having three subtitled parts: TotSC, SoA, ToB. With Pillars of Eternity, each subtitle refers to a geographic region. And since "The White March" clearly does not refer to the pre-expansion campaign of the first game, I've been trying to think of one. Something a bit more creative than "The Dyrwood"... ----- Pillars of Eternity: Hollowing of the Dyrwood Pillars of Eternity: The Hollowing Pillars of Eternity: No Sleep for the Watcher (already mentioned above) Pillars of Eternity: The Awakening Pillars of Eternity: Loading Screens of Caed Nua ( ) Pillars of Eternity: Reassurance Pillars of Eternity: Sun in Shadow ----- Personally, I think "Sun in Shadow" is the best choice. It's alliterative, it catches interest, and it satisfies the requirement of describing a location from the campaign. Pillars of Eternity: Sun in Shadow Pillars of Eternity: The White March Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pillars of Eternity II: ? (...we shall see!) That said, I'm interested in what other people have thought of!

Sorry for the second necro, but I just checked, the final battle still has standard combat music. I have WM1 + WM2 and version 3.02.1008 PX1 PX2. I've installed all GOG patches for POE base game, and WM1, and WM2. Has the track been changed for anyone else? Thanks!

I'd like to echo the excitement of others, and cast my vote to use crowdfunding again. Hopefully this time Obsidian won't make the mistake of TWO large cities. However, I do wish to make one plea to Obsidian: Please, please, please do *not* spend time redesigning the engine, graphics, etc. from scratch! One of the major benefits of the IE games was the ability of BG2 to reuse the assets and code from BG and TOTSC -- and, for that matter, PST and IWD. Orogs, Conugons, Myconids... Contrast that with Bioware's approach to Dragon Age II. Many of us would have been more than satisfied with DA:O's graphics and gameplay, with development gone to *added* creatures, maps, stories. Instead, they rebuilt everything from the ground-up -- even the models of the basic Darkspawn were changed. And we all know how that affected the writing, quests, and maps (or single map, in the case of the dungeons). And then, with Inquisition, they switched engines yet again!

I just finished WM2, and wanted to congratulate you guys on a job well done. Here's hoping to news about a POE2 kickstarter, soon!

After finishing WM2, I decided to go through Act IV again for my "final" playthrough in preparation for POE2 (...I hope!). I enabled "high level" scaling. I can appreciate that the devs tried to increase the challenge, but I found that my party that finished WM1 and WM2 still breezed through Act IV. The final battle was still more difficult than average, but nothing like some of the WM1 and WM2 fights. Without spoiling anything, I generally like the "final battle" in a game like this to have matching numbers on each side. BG1 = 4 BG2: SOA = 5 BG2: TOB (with Ascension) = 6 Perhaps POE's antagonist could get some help from to even things out?

Sorry for the necro, but with WM2 released I decided to play through the final battle again. (That is, the base game's Act 4 final battle.) I was surprised to discover that the "combat boss" music was *not* actually used. It was just a standard combat track. Was this true for anyone else? Did they only include this in the POE 3.0 patch (and forget to also put it in the WM2 installer)? Just wanted to mention it, because I absolutely loved the track. It's perfect for the final battle.

I wanted to clarify my proposal. I'm referring specifically to the program code -- the part of the software that does the number-crunching during combat, rendering of graphics, loading of saved games, and so on. These are the kinds of things that I feel would benefit from the community's contributions. That said, in addition to bugfixing, it would be great to see what kinds of mods the community could produce with the full source code. The other thing to clarify is, making the source code publicly available does not mean the game would suddenly become free of charge; you would still need to purchase a complete copy of the game, complete with art assets, to actually run the software. None of this would require that Obsidian give up creative control of the story or setting; it would only mean opening up a complex software project to many more people, who can contribute via strength in numbers. Think of the community that NWN created -- and that was a toolset, not the complete source code. Hope that clarifies my suggestion -- are there any other backers who feel the same way and have suggestions?

Hi everyone, I finished PoE and enjoyed it immensely. I'm proud to have contributed my $140 as a backer. I'm also optimistic about the game's future -- it is a fundamentally solid game that only needs bugfixes and some gameplay tweaks to sit alongside the IE games. I guess that's the reason I'm so frustrated. It seems that, for every ten people reporting the same error (or suggested tweak), progress is bottlenecked by the sheer limited number of programmers at the company. This is no fault of theirs -- a complex cRPG, particularly with RTwP combat, requires a tremendous expenditure of manpower to test for bugs, experiment with gameplay, and optimize performance on multiple platforms. Given the outspoken community and the excitement about the game, the company is sitting on a vastly untapped resource of players and programmers. This type of project screams out that it would benefit from open-sourcing the game code. Open-source allows for intense peer review, rapid customization by the end-user, and frees up players to experiment with gameplay tweaks. It's exactly what's needed when you have two outspoken, conflicting viewpoints over a component of a project (e.g. engagement). Of course, there are potential drawbacks: future story details may have been left in the game code, and the Unity engine uses a proprietary license for some components. I understand there will be some skepticism. I don't have any game design experience, and I'll acknowledge up front that I'm a supporter of open-source through the FSF and EFF. But I also put forward the following: Was there not, before this project, considerable skepticism of crowd-funding a game -- let alone a RTwP cRPG -- before that idea proved a success? Please at least consider this idea -- you have a huge community of backers who are enthusiastic about this project, and could make valuable contributions.