Pythos

@Roby, the issues are both in the character creator as well as the game itself. As per my previous posts, any item the main inventory is opened (on the player's character), as well as any time an item is switched out on one's avatar, the game will lag for a good 10-15 seconds. The audio/VO delay is constant with any interaction. A little update as well: I was experiencing this inventory/portrait/VO delay problem without having Hamachi installed so I did a little investigation. My motherboard has two built in ethernet devices, one an Intel and another being a Killer Ethernet E220x device. Applying what was learnt here on this forum and my previous experience with Kerbal Space Program, I reconnected to my network via my Intel port instead of the Killer and disabled the Killer within Windows. As soon as that was done, the problems within Pillars of Eternity were gone and any delay as well. There seems, in addition to Hamachi, to be an interface problem between Unity/PoE and Killer Ethernet cards as well. Thought I should mention this if anyone else has a Killer NIC as well. Hope it helps any users as a temporary work around and any devs with a solution! Kind regards.

bhutchison is absolutely right. Just tried this out myself and it works. As soon as I disabled my primary network adapter (my secondary has no affect) the game would run smoothly, without any delays. Thanks for this suggestion, bhutchison. Hopefully this can help narrow the bug down. Interestingly, I feel, I experienced a similar bug with Kerbal Space Program, in that its initial launch would take upwards of 30 minutes if the primary network adapter was not disabled before launching the game. Since both Kerbal and Pillars of Eternity share the Unity engine, could this perhaps be a Unity engine bug? I haven't played Kerbal in some time, and the last I heard was that the developers there were trying to work with the Unity devs to sort out the problem - perhaps there is a crossover bug here thanks to the engine?

Just a little bit of feedback concerning the inventory: As far as I can tell, it only freezes when the main character's (the player's) inventory is opened. If I have a party member as leader and open the inventory, there is no delay; however, if the player character is leader and the inventory is opened, or one switches to the player character within the inventory system, then the game hangs for awhile. Thought I'd mention this if it helps a diagnosis at all. As for the audio delay bug, can't say I've noticed anything I've done so far that affects it. Could it be a sound driver problem?

Experiencing the same issue here myself. Tried all of the above methods, but to no avail so far. I managed to make it past the slow character creation's portrait selection and voice choices, but the game is quite unplayable when there is that lengthy delay when opening the inventory and switching characters within the inventory. Also running an Intel CPU 4770k with an AMD R2985, for what its worth.