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I'm wondering about the True to Form sidequest for Hiravias, and just which direction to steer him in in the end. While I'm inclined to follow Galawain's request in the end and send the souls to strengthen the Dyrwood, Hiravias seems happier in the end if he sticks with Wael instead of going back to Galawain. If I encourage Hiravias to follow Wael, though, he'll also encourage me to break my promise to Galawain and do what Wael wants, which will mean the Dyrwood will suffer (and the dragon fights in Deadfire will harder, from my understanding). What's the more ethical direction to encourage Hiravias in? What way did YOU steer him in and why?

There is an ending where Maneha "Rediscovers her lust for battle, and her also having a lover, saying she had a life of violence, excitment, and passion. While there is an ending for Zahua saying that he took on a new apprentice, a female, trained her in everything he knew before she finally left for her own journey. Does anyone out there know how to achieve these endings? I've searched all over google and only know how to get every other ending on Pillars of Eternity EXCEPT those two. Has anyone ever got those two before? Thank you for your time reading this and hopefully having an answer to it.

I'm not going to bother with spoilers tags since this is a spoiler forum so just assume I wreck every single detail of every possible ending. In the last few scenes of the main story arc I found myself agreeing with Thaos' motivations, albeit not necessarily his methods. I convinced Aloth to take up the mantle of the leaden key after Thaos' death and I agreed with him in his conversation options during the final face off. I was really disappointed that there didn't seem to be any opportunity to be convinced that freeing Woedica is the right idea. I might have been able to be persuaded. Instead he kind of ignores my agreement with continuing to spread religion and just attacks me. I guess because I got too close to him and didn't really agree with his slaughter of countless innocents. I had high scores in benevolent, honest, diplomatic and rational, so its possible I just didn't play enough of a psychopath to get that option. I guess I still don't really understand Thaos' motivations for siding with Woedica and why the Leaden Key would sacrifice themselves just to provide her with souls. Isn't the huge mob of Leaden Key that sacrificed themselves in the huge chamber at the end in the final vision the Engwithans who invented the gods in the first place? I'm sure I'm missing something about that. I'll probably be able to figure it out on my next play through. Anyway I'm a little disappointed that there didn't seem to be an option to side with Woedica. Maybe they tried to make it so her side was always too horrible to consider. But I did agree that Thaos was doing the right thing by supporting the gods and preserving them.

Interested to see people's choices.

Been playing for about two hours. Each time I'm hit with a dialogue option that has a stat or skill attached to it, I've found that when I choose it, nothing really happens. I mean in the sense that nothing really new opens up, no new dialogue, no special action that you wouldn't get had you not picked that special dialogue. Is this for the beta only or am I just not meant to really use that mechanic in Dyrford?

Very impressive, first off. Very awesome dialogue screen. By my count, the nine dialogue options boil down to this: - 3 regular responses - 5 stat responses - 1 multi-stat response (this blows my mind and makes me so, so happy) I'm going to assume that the three regulars all flow into the same reaction (plus Athletics), but what about the other five? We know that there will/can be up to twelve responses for one screen, but how many of those are just for flavor? Those five are all stat-based, so I'm a bit cautious. I'm going to assume Intelligence and Perception flow into one peaceful response. If I may, what is the ratio of Flavor responses vs. Actual ones?

TLDR: Scroll to bottom for main points. I've been playing through Fallout NV recently. It's excellent quest design has brought to my mind a few points I'd like to share about NPC agency. Let's talk about the oldest trope in fantasy RPGs - that of the "quest". Usually a PC is given quests that entails "solving" problems for NPCs. If the player accepts a quest, then directions to complete said quest and possible rewards for doing so are made clear. If the player chooses to ignore the quest, then not much of anything happens (more on this point later). This plays into the power-fantasy that these games have historically filled. The player is either a White Knight travelling from town to town solving problems or an Evil **** (my own label) who benefits from said problems. This has always struck me as shallow and ultimately conceited; the White Knight's motivation is seemingly helping others in need but in actuality, his/her true motivation is the feeling of power gained by doing so. And if the player chooses not to engange in a quest (for whatever reason) then nothing changes because the NPC is incapable of handling the problem without the player's intervention. In my opinion, Kreia (from KOTOR 2) is the best NPC character I have ever encountered in any game. Her interactions with the player shred all the preconceived notions about being both a White Knight or an Evil ****. The conversation where she tears the player a new one for the ostensibly "noble" act of charity toward the traveller trapped at the port in Nar Shadda is permanently etched into my mind. "Such kindnesses will mean nothing, his path is set. Giving him that which he has not earned is like pouring sand into his hands." The notion that simply doing good deeds for others is the end-all cure to their problems was in desperate need of being thrown out with the rest of the simplistic moralism espoused by a lot of fantasy games - and Kreia was the one that did it for me. Back to New Vegas - one aspect of the quest system that really stood out to me was it gave the player the choice of not only solving the problems of NPCs but empowering NPCs to actually solve their own problems. A great example is one of the first quests you receive: Ghost Town Gunfight. Instead of merely eliminating the Powder Gangers and "solving" the problem, the player is put in a postition to empower the people of Goodsprings to help themselves. Rally the troops and have them play to their strengths in order to fight off the invaders. There is certainly a sense of satisfaction to be had from helping people help themselves. Sadly, this was not done nearly enough (even in NV). By declining to do a quest, the NPC would usually see you off with a "I'll be here if you change your mind" and then simply wait around for you to return and help him/her out of the problem. The quest that comes to mind is the one where the Brotherhood of Steel initiate asks you to return the laser pistol he dropped in the wastes while running from Radscorpions. I wanted to tell him that if he snuck out of the bunker for target practice, he can certainly do it again to retrieve his pistol, and if he's too cowardly to do so, he can talk to the quartermaster, admit his mistake, and bear the consequences of his actions. In short, he should SOLVE HIS OWN DAMN PROBLEM. Sadly, this was not an option provided in the dialogue tree. I left that quest undone on moral grounds, even though to complete it would have probably netted me some free supplies from the quartermaster. For those of you who are still with me, here are my simple recommendations for dealing with NPC agency in quests: Ensure that there are noticeable outcomes (positive, negative or otherwise) for both choosing to accept a quest and NOT choosing to accept it. If possible (because it isn't always possible) enable player to help NPCs solve their own problems. Seeing as how both the games from where I have taken ideas are Obsidian games, this is probably already well understood by the devs. I'd simply like to see more of it.

I was wondering if it's possible for players to complete the game while using only your main character. I understand that a lot of these kind of games are suppose to be played with a group of characters. However, I was wondering if its even possible to go around solo. I personally like to invest in choices for just a single character, I tend to have a really hard time focusing on what every character is suppose to do, and keeping track of how i had planned to level up every single character in the party. Also, when you have like a 6 man party your main character kinda boils in the middle and loses its identity. I kinda stop feeling like that is my character in the world and i'm just playing multiple characters at the same time. Don't get my wrong, I'm not complaining about these mechanics, they are purely rightful of being in the game, and this is totally my problem. I'm just wondering if the possibility for "lone wolf" gameplay is in the game. Either that, or being able to program your companions like in the "Dragon Age" series would be pretty neat. That's actually one of the reasons that made the 1st Dragon Age a really enjoyable experience for me. It felt like I was playing co-op with the AI, giving my companions even more personality. Thanks for reading.

So after debating a similar issues on another topic, I thought I would bring this here. I am curious what people think, even though I know we wont have "fixed morality" in this game like previous IE titles.

While I nonetheless expect this to be somewhat controversial, I want to start this off by saying that I appreciate Infinity Engine games for what they are, and this thread is not about what Project Eternity should be. Rather, I ask what Project Eternity is, which is very related to what Infinity Engine games are, or even more broadly DnD-based cRPGs. The reason is that I have noticed an increasing overlap in the past several years between the "action/adventure" and "RPG" or "role-playing game" genres, and it got me thinking about what the difference between them actually is. The obvious realization is that most players don't actual roleplay in any significant capacity when they play so-called RPGs, so where does that leave the genre? Certainly some of this apparent contradiction might have to do with the fact that different players define role-playing differently, but there are certain a substantial proportion of player who can hardly be said to roleplay at all. In some ways I think action/adventure games and role-playing games might exist along a spectrum, with the ideals of one genre at either end, and most games inhabiting the continuum in between. Where do Infinity Engine games, or Project Eternity, fall on this spectrum? I for one feel that the amount of combat focus (which perhaps just comes with any DnD-based game) is somewhat action/adventure-oriented, and at times the games feel more linear than some others that feature more open worlds. Additionally, certain aspects of characters are de-emphasized and the interactivity of the world is quite limited (ability buy property and so on). This leads me to believe that the majority of games marketed as RPGs are in fact action/adventure games glorified in certain manners, rather than games designed with holistic roleplay in mind. Please leave your thoughts on these questions and vote in the poll as I am sure the results will be quite informative to me.

Ugh, want to make a poll but too lazy and can't think of anything right now. Harassed this thread about this for a bit, because I didn't want to make a topic on it. There's many ways for expression to take place in the game. A pixel can do a lot. Text, Animations, Voice and still pictures/portraits. All tools for a more "representative" experience of the expression the Companion (or your character) is doing. In the attachments below there are some Examples of what I'm flirting with. JRPG's and Anime use lots of "emoticon" stuff that might not completely belong in Project: Eternity (I'm personally not ruling it out, perhaps there is a way to make it super goed in a realistic and acceptable way). Should the Character portraits included with the game also have a facial expression when you are "Choosing"? Instead of a "Red Text: This is a Renegade choice" versus the "Blue Text: This is an Alliance choice" it would be choosing your Dialogue Choice 1 through 3 depending on the expression of your character. Does he look menacing when you want to choose "I'll gut your stomach and stomp on your flesh!" versus having a more serene smiling facial expression next to the "Hey how are you?" choice Thoughts? EDIT: Less voice-acting required as the bodily language is conveyed through the facial portrait expression, however it could reduce a few sentences of text in the Dialogue Log because the Writer wouldn't need to write the characters "expressions" every time.

The questions of this poll were already disscused a bit elsewhere on the forum, but I'd like to raise them more specifically. So, what do you prefer: more choices and consequences that visibly affect things, or just more quests and bigger world, with maybe not so many real choices and visible consequences? And what is your opinion on adding stretch goals specifically dedicated to improving these aspects?

Obsidian has said that there will be many complex and difficult choices that can make significant changes to your playing experience. So what is everyone's opinions on how big of an effect these choices should have? And how should they carry over to future expansions/games? Should you be able to cause major changes within a society? Perhaps by helping to liberate an underclass, or change their system of government, or maybe even set a civilization on a path to destruction? Should you be able to change the course of nations? Should you be able help an occupied nation overthrow its invaders or convince a nation to invade someone else? How should that play out in future games? If you help one nation or one major faction defeat another, then that has the potential to cause huge changes in a future expansion or game even if a sequel takes place in another part of the world. How fast should you be able to cause these changes? For example, if you're trying to help an occupied nation overthrow its invaders, you might not be able to completely succeed in one game. Maybe you can help liberate one city in the first game, then you can spread the rebellion throughout the entire nation in an expansion, then you can fully liberate the nation in a sequel, and in the third game, you can help that nation either rebuild or perhaps launch a counter-attack against their invaders. I would of course also love to hear how far the developers are thinking in terms of all the potential ramifications of the player's choices, their effect on the game world and future games.