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I was trying to get a lock on the story timeline and finally read through the parts of the various wikis that talk about the background history of the worlds of The Outer Worlds. All of them mention TOW's first point of departure from our own history as taking place in 1901, when President William McKinley wasn't assassinated, and Theodore Roosevelt didn't become president of the United States. (Yes, I'm slow to the party.) This kinda majorly blew my mind. I've read Edmund Morris' Theodore Rex series, although it's been a while, and I need to read it again. But it's super intriguing that this one person's absence could be what leads to the throughly hyper-corporate culture of TOW (the gist is that without "Theodore the Sudden's" monopoly-busting activities, the growth and development of super-powerful corporations would have been unchecked, leading to the society we see at play in TOW). That got me thinking of a lot of things. One of the other things that Theodore Roosevelt was passionately interested in is a topic that's near and dear to my own heart: the US Navy. He's the one who instituted the sailing of the Great White Fleet in 1908, and I've always felt that this was one of the starting points (for good and for ill, in retrospect) of the United States' growth as a global superpower. Roosevelt, thoroughly onboard with Alfred Thayer Mahan (contemporary author of The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783), realized that dominance at sea was critical to a nation's prosperity, security, and power. There's no indication that Alfred Thayer Mahan was also absent in the history of TOW, but without a no-holds-barred leader like Roosevelt to act upon Mahan's ideas, what would the US Navy of TOW have looked like? Clearly there's some form of some kind of Navy/Marine Corps relationship (not necessarily the US Navy, mind you), because we run into the descendants of a Marine Detachment in Groundbreaker. But without Roosevelt, how would the growth of the United States as a global power be impacted? Would some other country have stepped in to bridge the gap? What would World Wars I and II looked like (I imagine that they still would have happened, especially WWI)? Would there have been the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, without the earlier effort to build up the size & effectiveness of the US Navy? I sort of imagine that governments would have had their own proprietary military forces for a while, but eventually the corporations would have become so powerful that governments would have had to contract out to the corporations for military services (sort of as if the British Crown had hired the military arm of the East India Company instead of maintaining its own Navy) before ultimately becoming subsumed themselves by corporations (a unified corporate takeover of governmental functions*?). It also reminded me strongly of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. If you haven't read it, I can't recommend it strongly enough. But I think I can safely say without spoiling it too much that it's set in a speculative world in which strong encryption has lead to the growth of cryptocurrency (a theme explored in another of his books, Cryptonomicon, also excellent), which in turn has led to governmental collapse and a world which is largely run by...you guess it, corporations. I need to go reread my Morris, and I can't help but wonder if the folks at Obsidian are Stephenson fans. I was absolutely delighted to find out this detail, though, and I have to think that they've thought about all of this, and I wonder if any more details about the much-earlier history of TOW's Earth will be part of the DLC (or maybe TOW 2)? I sure hope so. I am just on fire to learn more, and for me it really underscores why Obsidian is just so dang awesome. : ) * Do historians in the world of TOW talk about the "Instruments of Corporate Power" as opposed to the "Instruments of National Power"?

Hello, I seem to have stumbled upon a rather peculiar bug. Bug description: Independent of using an Obsidian-made legacy, a custom made legacy or imported from PoE1, Falanroed will not have a seat in the captains council in Dunnage, and Ferrante will call you a Dragonslayer as if you killed Sefyra in PoE1. In the imported PoE1 save, none of the four possible dragons are killed. Steps to recreate: Create a new game using 3.0. Import, create or use any legacy.

Hi! So I got Wasteland 2 from Steam and absolutely loving it. It feels slick! Regardless, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Character creation. Some backstory to the idea: Wasteland 2 has a very nice chargen, there's lots of pieces you can put together to create the character. I do have one issue with Wasteland 2's character creation, and that's the biography/history section where you can write your characters history yourself. Wasteland 2 has a very open ended beginning so your character can truly be anyone... but who is anyone in the Wasteland 2 world? When did the fallout begin? What are the factions? What are their roles? What's the timeline? I had no clue at first (I have now both looked it up and got some ideas from some replies on the same issue on the WL2 forum). Regardless, these are important things for the Player to be able to insert their character into the world authentically. The idea for Pillars of Eternity & Wasteland 2: Make it a bit easier, accessible, for the Player to write their backstory. Give some pointers or hints about the world in some descriptive tooltip-box of some kind during Character Creation. Hover over a "?" (Questionmark) and some text pops up. Maybe have a bullet-point list of some important things~ I don't want to write "My character is an X coming from Y" and then when I play the game/progression I don't want to encounter something pointing out my own created loopholes or flaws in the story saying "There hasn't been anyone coming from Y being an X" if you catch my drift. In my opinion and experience, I find it way more fun to play as a character that makes some sort of "sense" that they are in the world. I get more invested and immersed writing a backstory. The thing is, I don't think the majority of gamers will alt+tab out of the game and research the story/lore to be able to write a "proper" character or even write anything at all. I have created many characters in Wasteland 2, but only written what I think is a proper story for 1 character. I know Pillars of Eternity will have some sort of banter early-game that creates your characters backstory so maybe this idea isn't entirely actual for Eternity, but I wanted to throw the ball here as well as I think it's a valuable addition... just in case it works. It's an "Easily Implementable Idea" as well. I think it is something to consider... what do you think?

I just did some browsing on the P:E wiki (massive kudos to the people maintaining it, by the way). We know quite a lot about the world of Eora already, more than I thought really, since the lore has been coming out in dribs and drabs. I really like it. One thing that I thought was kind of "meh" about P:E back during the Kickstarter was that it seemed like very traditional pseudo-medieval western high fantasy. I've done that so many times, in games and books and movies, that I really wasn't all that keen to see another one. That's in fact the main reason I only backed at a relatively modest level (and why I backed T:ToN for significantly more). Now, however, it's clear that Obsidian's writers have put any number of really interesting twists on it. So much so that it's almost like it's only tradfantasy on the surface. Man am I digging it. Elves and dwarves. I didn't think there was a way to make them interesting again, but hey, they did it. Quite simple too, really. Stick 'em on the Antarctic ice cap. It's also arguably true to their origins, since Tolkienian elves and dwarves are to a great extent modeled on Nordic folklore. I'm especially digging the character concept of Sagani, and the notion of Pale Elves speaking an ancient language far, far away on endless fields of ice is exciting. Breaking the mold of culture=subrace. In tradfantasy, nonhuman cultures are monolithic. If there are different elven cultures, for example, they're different subraces, like the drow for example. Big points for breaking out of this mold, and making the elves of Dyrwood and Eír Glanfath the same subrace but different and antagonistic subcultures, and for the really interesting elven-human combined culture of the Aedyr Empire, complete with institutions like the haemneg. Social issues. Slavery seems to be an institution that the loremasters have considered carefully, since we know how each of the different cultures treat it -- practiced in the Aedyr Empire, abolished but lingering in Dyrwood, while the Vailians conduct a brisk slave trade. (I wonder if we're going to meet a Vailian slave trader? That could be explosive simply because they gave the Vailians dark skin... I hope we do actually.) We've also got a lot of information about the status of the Orlan, religious antagonism between followers of Magran and Waidwen, the complex relations between the Glanfathans, the Aedyr Empire, and Dyrwood, and so on. The aumaua. Polynesian-Japanese flavored semi-aquatic demihumans instead of slope-browed half-orcs with the occasional Noble Savage rising above his racial station? Yes please! Change. One standard trop in tradfantasy -- whether Star Wars, Tolkien, or D&D -- is that nothing much ever changes. Empires rise and fall, for sure, but there's no technological or real cultural change. If the possibility of change is present, it's always a threat -- a Dark Lord threatening to unravel the entire world. Fantasy, especially high and heroic fantasy, tends to be extremely conservative in its outlook this way. Obsidian did tell us that they were doing this from the outset, which I think was wise of them, since I think a lot of fantasy fans, perhaps especially IE game fans, consider this central to the genre. Firearms are symbolic of this -- I think a lot of the resistance to their inclusion springs from here: having them is a reminder that things are changing, which does break out of one of the most fundamental features of tradfantasy. I can understand that, even if I don't sympathize with it. Fantasy with change is much more interesting to me than static fantasy worlds where the Dark Lord rises, and is defeated, and Balance is Restored to the Force. Ancient history connected to the present. Okay, so we have to have a mysterious ancient lost empire leaving creepy ruins all over the place. It wouldn't be a proper fantasy game without them. Trope, yes, but a good one. I dig the twist they gave this too: figuring out what the creepy ruins mean for the people living among them. That they've become sacred sites for the Glanfathans, and a resource to plunder for the Aedyr Empire. (The former, by the way, nicely explains why the ruins we've seen look so clean and well-trafficked -- obviously their Glanfathan keepers have been taking care of them.) All in all, I've been enormously pleased with the direction Obsidian has taken with regards to the lore. The core tropes are there -- elves, dwarves, ancient empire, wizards, rogues, priests, what have you -- but just about everything has an interesting and new twist to it. This is much more interesting than, say, what BioWare did with space opera for Mass Effect, i.e. just put in all the tropes without examining and questioning any of it, which made everything incredibly predictable. I like it when writers keep me off-balance rather than feeding me something that's familiar and comforting. I'm getting increasingly excited about this game, and most of that excitement is because of the lore. Thank you for that, Obsidian.

Hello, everyone. I just wanted to post to let you know that we have increased the character count for some fields in the item survey. Item Appearance has been increased from 375 characters to 500 characters and Item History has been increased from 500 characters to 1,300 characters. If you have already submitted your survey but want to change your Item Appearance or Item History, please let us know by emailing support@obsidian.net. We would be happy to change it for you.

Old thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63322-russia-tread/ ~~ It takes a brave AND ingenious man to be uninterested in the Sochi winter Olympics. The official poll asks "Are you looking forward to the Olympic games?" There is no option to say 'no'. Every option bar one suggests pant-knotting enthusiasm. However, "other" is polling an impressive 69%+ of nearly 18000 votes, as of the time of this post.

Hi As a proud gamers we know that storyline and main plot is one of the most inportant part of the game. But before we enter epic main storyline we must at least create ouw character. To this time we know that we will have possibility to play difrent races, classes and even cultures. But what about our characters past ? One of the biggest issu i have when i start playing old D&D games is the "start of the game". Let's take Baldours Gate 1. How is it possible that are character learned how to become a druid if he didn't ever leave candlekeep before game events ? Adding "one" start begining for our character will do if we have classes like rogue or fighter that mostly whoud gain expierience and knowledge by training alone. But for druids, paladins, wizards and mostly for barberians and druids this type of "simmilar" begining is in some way immersion breaking. What type of history orgin and start of the game whoud you like to see in PE ? Yes Yes, we have a poll One thing, then i say orgins i mean our hisotry, race, class, culture and entire past before we "enter" main storyline

Thread go. Theme №1 - Hittites. Myth №1 - Hittites are Semitic people (payos, semitic apperance). Reason to creating of myth: Semitophilia of anglo-saxon protestants. Truth: Hittites are Indo-Europeans, Aryans, antogonists of Semites. Traditional Aryan Haircuts of Hittites. Garuda sign Myth № 2 - Hittites has been defeated in Kadesh battle. Reason to create of myth: Egyptian propagand and Egyptophilia of freemasons. Truth: Egyptians has been defeated in Kadesh battle, Egypt lost territories and signed peace treaty.

I'm trying to find out where and when the city of Neverwinter was introduced into Forgotten Realms. Anyone know this for sure? I know that Neverwinter appeared for the first time in a CRPG in SSI's "Gateway to the Savage Frontier" back in 1991. What I'm not sure of is if Neverwinter existed before that, or if it was something that was created specifically for that game. Thanks...

Not sure if this has already been covered but I would really love to see the old character information implemented again. Being able to check what % of kills a party member has made, strongest enemy killed etc seems like a small thing but it was a really cool feature. I'd even like to see this expanded on somewhat if possible. Maybe have a big codex of monsters that gave you a description of each with a nice bit of artwork that got unlocked when you killed it. You could even incorporate this so that the more creatures you kill of that type the more information is unlocked. By the time you've killed 50 odd skeletons you've pretty much summed up that smashing them with a blunt object is the best way to go.

How important is lore fluff to you? Is it important? Do you feel it is unimportant? Personally, I love finding books and other such items that you can read to find out more information about the history of the realm, other nations and people. I feel it really adds to the polished feel of the game and depth of the environment. Having said that, I always collect books and think of it as a mini game in a way. I like having somewhere to keep my collection.