Please let Deadfire be enjoyable in a single playthrough

[Selky]

Reactivity to your Watcher's background/race/class add a lot to the experience, even if you only play through once. It makes my day when an [Artist] choice pops up!

[PrimeJunta]

I wasn't saying that. Let me explain myself with an example.

You are playing a side quest with no connections to the main plot, in which you are asked to support one of two people that want to become the next ruler of kingdom X. One of them likes order and has connections with the nobles of the city, the game hints at the fact that he doesn't give a damn about the people and he would exploit the poor and rule with an iron fist. The other one is Robin Hood, the very sympathetic outlaw that wants the good of his people. You choose the latter and help him raise to the throne in a peaceful way. When you leave the city everything seems to be going fine.

 

You finish the game and during the slideshow at the end you learn that Robin Hood has let outlaws into the city and poor people are now living in constant fear of robberies, rapes and other cool stuff.

 

Ok, from a strictly logical point of view the plot works: Robin Hood was an outlaw after all. I have some question though: is this what the player wanted to achieve? Was the player presented with enough information to assess the situation properly? Was this twist necessary for the main plot?

 

No, it wasn't what the player wanted to achieve. From that short example of yours I couldn't say if there was enough information presented -- to pull it off properly you would have to have the opportunity to interact with some of Robin's merry men, and determine that not all of them are as well-intentioned as he is. If it was done that way, I think it would've been a pretty cool twist actually -- that maybe the ordinary people of Notthingham preferred the law and order of the Sheriff, despite the taxes and other downsides.

 

So yeah, I would've liked that twist. And it would've made me want to play through again, making different choices and see how they played out. 

 

You don't always get what you want, not in life, and not even in a power fantasy like a game.

[injurai]

Having branching paths that don't punish the player is super super important to me. I don't mind feature gates. Real life is about tradeoffs. But when you get nothing in return, it feels really bad.

[Varana]

Rahelron: Now that is something I agree with.

Having a twist to something you did, or tracking your actions and revealing consequences later, too often mostly refers to negative consequences, and things turning out worse than intended, and making the world gloomy and depressing has become normal. (There has been said a lot about the "loss of utopia", in reality, in fiction, and even in games, and fantasy is no exception. It's no coincidence that the utterly pessimistic and pointless Song of Ice and Fire dominates mainstream fantasy.)

 

But that isn't about having no consequences, or only foreseeable consequences. It's more about what to expect from those consequences. When I can reliably predict that any twist will only make things worse, I'll get wary of twists (or stop caring about the game world), and at least for me, that leads to checking in advance before I make major decisions.

 

And also: Yes, giving meaningful feedback to the player about the intentions, actions, and character of people in the game world isn't easy. Between making things too obvious and turning people into caricatures or walking clichés ("this guy's obviously evil / incompetent / a total jerk! why does no one see this?"), and hiding things too well or simply not telling the player anything ("ha! you could see she's evil by how she treats her pet hamster, and now your companion's mad at you because you didn't notice!"), there is a fine balance that doesn't write itself.

 

So I think I agree with you on some of the points you're coming from; I just vehemently disagree with the solutions in your first post.

 

P.S. Sorry for the long sentences.

Edited February 11, 2017 by Varana

[Yonjuro]

Mmmm... You are right.

 

But I still don't like this trend in RPGs:

 

1.0 RPG quests: you are hired by the good guy in order to kill the bad guy. You do that and everyone lives happily ever after

 

2.0 RPG quests: you are hired by someone who tells you to be the good guy, in order to kill the supposed bad guy. You set off to do that, but you learn that things are different and the real bad guy is the one who hired you. You kill him and everyone lives happily ever after.

 

3.0 RPG quests: two different factions try to earn your support, but there are no good or bad guys. You have to choose the lesser evil based on your personal beliefs. At the end you achieve your goal, but there is always a bittersweet side to it.

 

4.0 RPG quests: two or more factions try to earn your support, there are no good and no bad guys and you also don't know what are the exact plans of each faction. You struggle to understand what's going on while the quest progresses and in the end you kill a final enemy hoping you did the right thing. At the end of the game you learn that it was more complex than you thought (don't you say...) and that your actions brought unexpected consequences.

 

 

 I think I see what you mean here. As consequences get more nuanced, if there isn't a way in the game to investigate the nuances, then the game hasn't gotten more interesting to play.

 

 Or, to put it another way, when the plot thickens, the game play needs to thicken by an equal amount.

 

 To use a silly example, if you played Pacman and got poignant ending slides that varied depending on the order that you ate the ghosts, that wouldn't make the game better because you have no way to make an informed decision in the game. Choices aren't meaningful if you end up making them randomly.

 

 Is that point you are making?

[Sylvus_Moonbow]

Do you have a final save game because I would love to start poe2 with the messed-up choices you made.

[Tigranes]

If you want to enjoy your one playthrough, then stop obsessing about content you missed or different endings you could have gotten if you only did x or y. For you, it doesn't matter if someone else in the universe is getting a different ending or if the developers coded in reactive responses. 

 

All that matters is, was your one playthrough fun, and did it seem like a complete experience? I don't see anything to suggest that wasn't the case in POE, or in The Witcher 2, or any of the other RPGs with clear nonlinear segments (actually POE isn't very nonlinear at all). Everything else is just a case of FOMO, a completionist desire to do everything and get every point, and/or your wish to get all your choices 'exactly perfect'. None of those things are really the developer or game's problem, because addressing them would require letting down many other players.

 

--

 

As for the relatively distinct problem of whether players get enough information to make meaningful choices, that's a fair one to raise, where the question is how you draw the line. For the Robin Hood example you raise, though, I'd be perfectly fine with that if I felt like the outcome makes sense. I don't play games to roleplay a deus ex machina man who fixes everyone's problems and prescribes exactly the outcome I want for every part of the story. That would be meaningless for me, personally. 

Edited February 11, 2017 by Tigranes

[Heijoushin]

If you want to enjoy your one playthrough, then stop obsessing about content you missed or different endings you could have gotten if you only did x or y. For you, it doesn't matter if someone else in the universe is getting a different ending or if the developers coded in reactive responses. 

 

All that matters is, was your one playthrough fun, and did it seem like a complete experience? I don't see anything to suggest that wasn't the case in POE, or in The Witcher 2, or any of the other RPGs with clear nonlinear segments (actually POE isn't very nonlinear at all). Everything else is just a case of FOMO, a completionist desire to do everything and get every point, and/or your wish to get all your choices 'exactly perfect'. None of those things are really the developer or game's problem, because addressing them would require letting down many other players.

 

--

 

As for the relatively distinct problem of whether players get enough information to make meaningful choices, that's a fair one to raise, where the question is how you draw the line. For the Robin Hood example you raise, though, I'd be perfectly fine with that if I felt like the outcome makes sense. I don't play games to roleplay a deus ex machina man who fixes everyone's problems and prescribes exactly the outcome I want for every part of the story. That would be meaningless for me, personally. 

 

There is much wisdom in this post. This is going into philosophical territory here, but basically its all about the kind of mindset that you have going into the game. If you have a neurotic completionist mindset, and want to see ever string of dialogue (I confess to being like this sometimes), then you're going to have some unhappy feelings on the way. It's not fair to blame this on the developer.

 

If you want a game without too much reactivity, I recommend J-RPGs. No, really. They tend to shepherd you down a predestined path with obviously rigged choices.

Example:

"R... Rahelron-kun, what are you doing!?"

a) S... sorry!

b) It was an accident!

c) I didn't mean to!

[evilcat]

Telltale games are fun to, good story, interesting characters, you make some choices but they dont matter all that much.

 

As for funny gaming story: In Witcher 2 we could be a good guy, save some monsters, kill some ppl. Good job. And then kings decide that it is time to kill each other and 10k people died one day. And lone witcher cant do sheep about it. When it came to final boss, killing him was unimportant, might as well spare him, probably has good reason. At least in witcher we cant shape the world completly, but if we rescue our foster YogSothoth daughter and necromancer girlfriend and still live, we can call it a good day.

 

What really matters in life, what we have experienced or what we missed?

Edited February 12, 2017 by evilcat

[Gromnir]

This is a very personal need I have, I don't know if it applies to any other member of this forum, but'ill express it anyways. 

 

I've noticed that some of the new features that will be introduced in Deadfire (like for example the enhanced reactivity, berath's blessing and so on) can be effectively enjoyed only if the player does multiple playthroughs.

 

Please Obsidian, try also to focus on those that will be able to play through your game just once.

This requests comes from the fact that I'm in a moment of my life that allows me to set aside only a few hours per week to play games. It literally took me more than a year to go through the 103 hours I needed to finish Pillars of Eternity, and this doesn't count the expansions, that I've never played even though I bought them. I can't afford to play through a game multiple times to see all the weath of choices, features and reactivity that appear only with multiple playthroughs.

 

I'm not saying that PoE should stop focusing on choices, consequences and interactivity. In fact this is the very reason why I play RPG games. I mean that Deadfire should present those choices, consequences and interactivity in a way that is enjoyable even in a single playthrough.

 

I'll make some examples in order to explain mysef better:

• At the end of PoE I didn't like the endings I got for many of my companions (particularly for Aloth and the Grieving Mother, but also for others). The bad thing is that I wasn't able to see them coming and act accordingly when I had the chance. When I made the decisions that brought me to the endings I got, I wasn't able to understand their possible impacts. This wouldn't have been a problem years ago: I would have played through the game once more just to achieve the "perfect ending", but doing that has become a problem for me now. I personally don't like this trend of giving unexpected consequences to the actions of players that RPGs seem to like so much these days. Sometimes unforseeable results are useful to pass the message that "life does not always go as expected", but when overdone it just adds frustration to players. I hope that this kind of consequences will be toned down a bit in the next chapter, in favor of choices that let the player know the effects they will cause on the end state of the world and the end state of the characters involved.
• I also don't look forward to having all the "enhanced reactivity" based on the race, class and background of the main character. This is another thing that is enjoyable only thrugh multiple playthroughs, and let me say that I don't consider it meaningful in general. Having some dedicated dialogue choices, or some NPCs that react to you in a particular way just because your rac or class e is XY is a gimmick that is great at the beginning, but grows old quickly.
• Finally, I do not like when games cut content away from the player just because of a choice he makes during the campaign. IMPORTANT: when I talk about cutting content away I mean removing content from the playthrough without giving something else in return. For example: I hate how Baldur's Gate II punishes the player for making the right choice when it prevents the player from playing through the part in the underwater city if he refuses to follow Saemon Havarian in the return trip from Spellhold. Saemon is clearly not to be trusted, every single smart person should choose to use the portal instead of asking a men who already betrayed him once to help him again. The problem is that doing that the player looses on experience, unique loot and a whole subplot without getting anything in return. By comparison, the Witcher 2 cuts away a whole zone in chapter 2 depending on player's choices, but it also gives the player access to another, exclusive zone. This is a branching path that doesn't punish the player, impacts the story in a meaningful way and is enjoyable even in a single playthrough because the player doesn't feel to loose something without something else in return.

 

Those were just three examples, but there could be more. I think that in order to make a game enjoyable in a single playthrough it should:

• Let the player understand the consequences of the choices he is making, throwing at him unforseeable results ONLY when it is absolutely necessary for the plot.
• Do not hide meaningful story content behind difficult puzzles or in easter eggs. Those are exactly the things that players usually miss in the first playthrough and having to restart the game just to access to an important plot point that you missed the first time is frustrating as hell.
• Focus on features that expand what the player can do in the world and do not cut content away without giving something else in return, forcing him to restart the game if he wants to experience what he lost.

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks a lot.

yes.  we agree with everything you said, but completely the opposite.

 

however, one thing we will note is that developers rare give us a good reason to replay a game.  sure, Gromnir is a hardcore crpg guy who played the ie games and poe numerous times, but is not as if developers actual made replay appealing.  story, save at end or for complete insular sidequests is gonna play out similar no matter what you do.  follow same basic critical path encounters regardless if your character is good or bad or clever or dumb or whatever.  makes story more dull each time played.

 

 

after diablo were released, publishers got it into their heads that crpgs needed multiplayer.  took more than a decade to disabuse folks making games o' the notion. for more than a decade publishers were throwing away development dollars by adding multiplayer to games largely unsuited for mp.  am thinking the belief that people don't wanna replay games is similar.  sure, most people do not replay games, but that is 'cause the developers don't believe players wanna replay games, so the developers never bother to genuine make replayability a serious consideration. has become a self fulfilling prophecy o' sorts.

 

we would like for a serious crpg developer to make replay a priority.  start a new game and get a substantial different story.  sure, the game would necessarily be shorter/smaller, but am thinking it would be worth the effort.  

 

...

 

the possibility o' getting real replayability shouldn't remind one o' martin luther king jr's i have a dream speech.

 

but yeah, we agree with everything you said, just the complete opposite.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Mygaffer]

As a working adult who doesn't have a lot of time to play the game, but still found the where I could over the years since it's been released, I quite disagree. I don't want to know ahead of time how everything is going to turn out. Sure, I want maybe some clues about what effect my choices will have but the second I know for sure is the second those choices become a lot less interesting to me.

 

Secondly you don't have to be happy with all of your companion endings. You made some choices and you see what happened. Maybe it wasn't a good outcome, or at least not one you think is a good outcome. That's kind of part of the experience in the Pillars world. You control the choice, not the outcome.

 

Also I definitely want a lot of reactivity. I will agree in spirit with one thing you're saying, I don't want it to go so far that half the content can be cut out depending on what decisions I make, as I fear it would make the game too short, but I'm 100% OK with not getting some loot or going through one dungeon instead of another, or one quest instead of another, or one branch of quest instead of another, etc., if it means I'm making meaningful choices, or at least choices that feel meaningful.

 

I want to feel like a real agent in this world, where by making a decision I'm not only affecting myself but I'm effecting the world. That can't happen in a static world where every play through is the same. And if every play through is the same that means I'm on rails and my decisions don't really matter at all, except perhaps for what color explosions I get at the end.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Mygaffer

[Mygaffer]

 

 

• I also don't look forward to having all the "enhanced reactivity" based on the race, class and background of the main character. This is another thing that is enjoyable only thrugh multiple playthroughs, and let me say that I don't consider it meaningful in general. Having some dedicated dialogue choices, or some NPCs that react to you in a particular way just because your rac or class e is XY is a gimmick that is great at the beginning, but grows old quickly.

 

 

You sure like your :hmmm: icon a lot.

[algroth]

Yeah, echoing what others have said, I don't see how any of the expanded reactivity and the likes wouldn't benefit the first plathrough just as much. This request is a little silly.

[Dawnraz0r]

I'm usually not one to do repeated playthroughs unless it's after a good deal of time, but the way characters react differently to you based on who you are and what you do is precisely what makes an RPG great, you know, to reflect how you are playing the role of an active character in the story that's being told! I've played Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines twice, once as Tremere and once as Malkavian, almost 10 years apart between each playthrough and I absolutely loved how everything was so different for a Malkavian character in my most recent playthough.

 

If anything I want more unique reactivity in Pillars 2.

[teenparty]

I'm usually not one to do repeated playthroughs unless it's after a good deal of time, but the way characters react differently to you based on who you are and what you do is precisely what makes an RPG great, you know, to reflect how you are playing the role of an active character in the story that's being told! I've played Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines twice, once as Tremere and once as Malkavian, almost 10 years apart between each playthrough and I absolutely loved how everything was so different for a Malkavian character in my most recent playthough.

 

If anything I want more unique reactivity in Pillars 2.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is amazing. Malkavian all the way! That Lost Boys reference.

 

Bah! No fun!

[Taurus]

I'm against it.

 

Making choice and consequence too obvious = dumbing down the game.

 

If you are unhappy with your slides in the end, and don't have time to replay, you can always check YouTube nowadays, or the game wikis.

 

You make it sound like you want a crpg "on rails".

[Kulin]

 

• At the end of PoE I didn't like the endings I got for many of my companions (particularly for Aloth and the Grieving Mother, but also for others). The bad thing is that I wasn't able to see them coming and act accordingly when I had the chance. When I made the decisions that brought me to the endings I got, I wasn't able to understand their possible impacts. This wouldn't have been a problem years ago: I would have played through the game once more just to achieve the "perfect ending", but doing that has become a problem for me now. I personally don't like this trend of giving unexpected consequences to the actions of players that RPGs seem to like so much these days. Sometimes unforseeable results are useful to pass the message that "life does not always go as expected", but when overdone it just adds frustration to players. I hope that this kind of consequences will be toned down a bit in the next chapter, in favor of choices that let the player know the effects they will cause on the end state of the world and the end state of the characters involved.

 

That is absolutely fair. I think we still don't know WHY certain endings happen and what the factors weigh in. It would be nice to at least retroactively look back at choices and go "aha, so that is why I got a bad companion ending".

 

 

I think this is important, too.

 

Spoiler from PoE ahead:

 

Just yesterday i played PoE and came across a point in the story when Sagani found the Persoq the Stag. If you say "tell him about your family" in the ending she loves her family and everything is nice. But If i tell her "It doesn't matter what you tell him, because you are doing this for your village" this means she is going to kill herself, because her whole life is without meaning. I not only interpreted this last sentence completely different because this was for me "the good" answer. In my opinion there there is nothing meaningless in "doing it for your village". I also saw no reason why telling a animal about his family from his previous life could help. It is an animal after all and i'm sure he will not understand anything.

 

I really hated this part. I mean: suicide because she instantly think live is meaningless? What about all her other achievements? She helped to save many lifes in my party. And one sentence (very open to interpretation) takes all this meaning from her?

 

[evilcat]

Unless somebody is going to die soon there will always be second walkthought of most epic games.

At some point you will get that killer cold when gaming is max you can do.

World will probably be wars and disasters so not much traveling on retirment neither.

[Amentep]

 

 

• At the end of PoE I didn't like the endings I got for many of my companions (particularly for Aloth and the Grieving Mother, but also for others). The bad thing is that I wasn't able to see them coming and act accordingly when I had the chance. When I made the decisions that brought me to the endings I got, I wasn't able to understand their possible impacts. This wouldn't have been a problem years ago: I would have played through the game once more just to achieve the "perfect ending", but doing that has become a problem for me now. I personally don't like this trend of giving unexpected consequences to the actions of players that RPGs seem to like so much these days. Sometimes unforseeable results are useful to pass the message that "life does not always go as expected", but when overdone it just adds frustration to players. I hope that this kind of consequences will be toned down a bit in the next chapter, in favor of choices that let the player know the effects they will cause on the end state of the world and the end state of the characters involved.

 

That is absolutely fair. I think we still don't know WHY certain endings happen and what the factors weigh in. It would be nice to at least retroactively look back at choices and go "aha, so that is why I got a bad companion ending".

 

 

I think this is important, too.

 

Spoiler from PoE ahead:

 

Just yesterday i played PoE and came across a point in the story when Sagani found the Persoq the Stag. If you say "tell him about your family" in the ending she loves her family and everything is nice. But If i tell her "It doesn't matter what you tell him, because you are doing this for your village" this means she is going to kill herself, because her whole life is without meaning. I not only interpreted this last sentence completely different because this was for me "the good" answer. In my opinion there there is nothing meaningless in "doing it for your village". I also saw no reason why telling a animal about his family from his previous life could help. It is an animal after all and i'm sure he will not understand anything.

 

I really hated this part. I mean: suicide because she instantly think live is meaningless? What about all her other achievements? She helped to save many lifes in my party. And one sentence (very open to interpretation) takes all this meaning from her?

 

 

 

 

IIRC, doesn't the game establish that people with problems are drawn to the Watcher and influenced by them? If my memory is correct, telling Sagani at a critical point that what she'd doing "doesn't matter" would be a blow big enough to instill doubt in her about the worth of her clan's traditions - which is what the ending implies.  You also get this ending if you choose the "Trust your instincts" choice but have said the journey was pointless in previous conversations.  So the key isn't the end of the sentence but the beginning.  She also doesn't commit suicide, she becomes reckless in the pursuit of a meaningful life - which she lost when the Watcher caused her to begin doubting her beliefs.

 

I always supported her quest even if I didn't share her beliefs and told her to trust her instincts (why would I assume I know her culture better than her?) and got an okay ending (I think she retired or something).

 

 

I say that to mean, at the end of the day, the best RPGs have you make your choices and live with them - that's the core of role-playing.  In Pen and Paper rpgs that cRPGs are based on, the DM is not going to say "You have two choices, the good one where you'll get everything you want the way you and the bad one where you won't...which will you choose?", instead you're going to say what you do/say and the DM is going to interpret that as they see fit.  I don't feel that anything PoE did was out of the pale with respect to that.  Sometimes you're going to try to do good and it won't turn out well; sometimes you'll say the wrong thing and it won't be interpreted as you intended it.  That helps make the situations and NPCs less like entities that only exist so the PC can 'win' and more like a responsive environment where choices matter in ways you might not expect.

[Kulin]

 

 

 

• At the end of PoE I didn't like the endings I got for many of my companions (particularly for Aloth and the Grieving Mother, but also for others). The bad thing is that I wasn't able to see them coming and act accordingly when I had the chance. When I made the decisions that brought me to the endings I got, I wasn't able to understand their possible impacts. This wouldn't have been a problem years ago: I would have played through the game once more just to achieve the "perfect ending", but doing that has become a problem for me now. I personally don't like this trend of giving unexpected consequences to the actions of players that RPGs seem to like so much these days. Sometimes unforseeable results are useful to pass the message that "life does not always go as expected", but when overdone it just adds frustration to players. I hope that this kind of consequences will be toned down a bit in the next chapter, in favor of choices that let the player know the effects they will cause on the end state of the world and the end state of the characters involved.

 

That is absolutely fair. I think we still don't know WHY certain endings happen and what the factors weigh in. It would be nice to at least retroactively look back at choices and go "aha, so that is why I got a bad companion ending".

 

 

I think this is important, too.

 

Spoiler from PoE ahead:

 

Just yesterday i played PoE and came across a point in the story when Sagani found the Persoq the Stag. If you say "tell him about your family" in the ending she loves her family and everything is nice. But If i tell her "It doesn't matter what you tell him, because you are doing this for your village" this means she is going to kill herself, because her whole life is without meaning. I not only interpreted this last sentence completely different because this was for me "the good" answer. In my opinion there there is nothing meaningless in "doing it for your village". I also saw no reason why telling a animal about his family from his previous life could help. It is an animal after all and i'm sure he will not understand anything.

 

I really hated this part. I mean: suicide because she instantly think live is meaningless? What about all her other achievements? She helped to save many lifes in my party. And one sentence (very open to interpretation) takes all this meaning from her?

 

 

 

 

IIRC, doesn't the game establish that people with problems are drawn to the Watcher and influenced by them? If my memory is correct, telling Sagani at a critical point that what she'd doing "doesn't matter" would be a blow big enough to instill doubt in her about the worth of her clan's traditions - which is what the ending implies.  You also get this ending if you choose the "Trust your instincts" choice but have said the journey was pointless in previous conversations.  So the key isn't the end of the sentence but the beginning.  She also doesn't commit suicide, she becomes reckless in the pursuit of a meaningful life - which she lost when the Watcher caused her to begin doubting her beliefs.

 

I always supported her quest even if I didn't share her beliefs and told her to trust her instincts (why would I assume I know her culture better than her?) and got an okay ending (I think she retired or something).

 

 

I say that to mean, at the end of the day, the best RPGs have you make your choices and live with them - that's the core of role-playing.  In Pen and Paper rpgs that cRPGs are based on, the DM is not going to say "You have two choices, the good one where you'll get everything you want the way you and the bad one where you won't...which will you choose?", instead you're going to say what you do/say and the DM is going to interpret that as they see fit.  I don't feel that anything PoE did was out of the pale with respect to that.  Sometimes you're going to try to do good and it won't turn out well; sometimes you'll say the wrong thing and it won't be interpreted as you intended it.  That helps make the situations and NPCs less like entities that only exist so the PC can 'win' and more like a responsive environment where choices matter in ways you might not expect.

 

 

We talk here about one single sentence, that turns the life of a person upside down, without any chance to explain myself or to correct it. In my opinion that is the opposite of lifelike. A conversation does just not work that way. You say something to a person. The person reacts. You clarify yourself, if necessary. A person does not lose her meaning in life in cause of a simple sentence(Maybe beside: "You are fired!" or something similar). It's normally a longer progress and involves many little steps toward a certain direction.

 

Its also no real choice if you interpret a sentence differently then the game designers. This kind of choice feels more like an accident. You take a dialogue option and get something completely different. Remembers me a lot about the Fallout 4 or Dragon Age 3 dialogues where you always had only a few words to choose from and very often did not get the expected answer. This happens less in PoE but it still happens sometimes.

 

In my opinion some kind of reputation-like system would be better. Example: A scale between "absolute good for sagani" and "absolute bad for sagani". If you do something that supports her view on the world she gets a +. If you do the opposite she gets a -. At the end we look at this scale and then we determine how sagani has been influenced by the watcher.

[Amentep]

We talk here about one single sentence, that turns the life of a person upside down, without any chance to explain myself or to correct it. In my opinion that is the opposite of lifelike. A conversation does just not work that way.

 

There are several ways to send Sagani to that one ending path and all of them are tied - as I understand it - to essentially saying that her journey is a pointless ritual. When you meet her she's struggling to understand the point of the quest and missing her kids.  Re-enforcing to her that the quest is pointless conceptually worms into her head such that she dreads going home and when she gets home she struggles to find a new meaning in her life.

 

First part of the sentence when Sagani asks for council is "It doesn't matter what you say".  You're telling her the quest was pointless.  If you want to re-affirm her belief - even if you don't believe it yourself - you'd pick the option to tell Persoq what he meant to Massuk as it is clearly the re-affirmation of her beliefs choice (and in fact I think that's what she tells you she's supposed to do).

 

As I recall the game tells you the Watcher will gather souls in crisis around him/her; clearly Sagani's crisis is one of faith in her traditions in the face of missing out on the life she left behind.

[Kulin]

 

We talk here about one single sentence, that turns the life of a person upside down, without any chance to explain myself or to correct it. In my opinion that is the opposite of lifelike. A conversation does just not work that way.

 

There are several ways to send Sagani to that one ending path and all of them are tied - as I understand it - to essentially saying that her journey is a pointless ritual. When you meet her she's struggling to understand the point of the quest and missing her kids.  Re-enforcing to her that the quest is pointless conceptually worms into her head such that she dreads going home and when she gets home she struggles to find a new meaning in her life.

 

First part of the sentence when Sagani asks for council is "It doesn't matter what you say".  You're telling her the quest was pointless.  If you want to re-affirm her belief - even if you don't believe it yourself - you'd pick the option to tell Persoq what he meant to Massuk as it is clearly the re-affirmation of her beliefs choice (and in fact I think that's what she tells you she's supposed to do).

 

As I recall the game tells you the Watcher will gather souls in crisis around him/her; clearly Sagani's crisis is one of faith in her traditions in the face of missing out on the life she left behind.

 

 

More PoE Spoilers ahead:

 

At this position this is - according to gamepedia - a one sentence choice and ignores the previous conversations. If you say "It doesn't matter..." it's done. If you chose "Trust your instincts" it depends on the things you said in previous conversations. If you chose family in previous dialogues its the good ending... If you said it is irrelevant it will result in the suicide ending. And so on.

 

I also still don't see how "It doesn't matter what you say. He's dying and you're doing this for your village." could mean: "everything is irrelevant, better kill yourself". She is talking to a deer on the brink of death, so she is clearly not doing it for the deer but for herself and the village. I also didn't tell her to fart into the deer's ear. I merely interpreted it as "Hurry up with whatever your are going to say. He is dead soon. Do it NOW!".

 

 

[Amentep]

 

The whole point of her quest is to find Persoq and remind him what he meant to the village - she literally is doing it for the deer, not the village.  I also don't interpret her ending as her killing herself - she comes so driven to find a meaning in life that she gets herself killed through recklessness. You can view that as a negative end, but if your character really believed that there was no meaning in the ritual, it was pointlessly fostered on her by a village that had sent her away from her loved ones, then this is the choice you'd make.

 

[Gromnir]

 clearly Sagani's crisis is one of faith in her traditions in the face of missing out on the life she left behind.

 

'course the compelling thematic linchpin for poe2 may be... colonialism?  am hoping josh didn't actual mean it that way.  obsidian took a step forward with poe1 by placing more o' the workload o' advancing the core themes o' the game with the companion stories/quests. all companions had a crisis o' faith.  such unity o' theme were not a mechanical change from previous games, but it improved story as we need not have a single, ill-defined, and mutable protagonist trying to advance theme and story.

 

*shrug*

 

the recent 3.0 stretch goal bothers us.  the mechanics o' companion interaction is not gonna be what makes pallegina more interesting than she were in poe1.  opposite problem is more likely.  the more the companion interactions become fickle and subject to whims o' a protean protagonist, the less useful they is gonna be for advancing story.  am understanding the reflexive appeal o' adding choice to a crpg, but am also recognizing the limitations such choice often places 'pon coherent storytelling.

 

one step forward, and two steps back?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Piero]

Thoughts?

 

I have no problem with choice that bring limitations if are sustained enough, one consequence of this would be that the player cant thing of ways to avoid it, if there is a way, the player should be able to do it and cross different paths on the same play-throw and not be limited just to generate the sensation of "meaningful choices", like feel that is what happen on Defiance Bay when choosing a faction, i wanted to send some companions that no one on the city knows so the faction doesn't know that i am working with their enemy, but there is not such mechanic on PoE, so they should avoid putting you in situation where you can thing on solutions that are impossible in the game, but not because the world don't allow you, but because limitations of the game.

 

about removing the consequences of who you are and only focus on consequences for what you do, i thing it should focus, as it does, on what you do, but it wouldn't have sense that who you are doesn't have any reactivity, because it wouldn't have sense that anyone react different based on who you are. There is not substantial content for who you are anyway.

 

About the player knowing the consequences of their acts, if what you have in mind is that simple as you put it, i don't agree, but there should be tracks about the possibles consequences of you actions, some more obvious and clear, some very hidden,ambiguous and tricky , but always some track

 

i was surprised when after read the tittle didn't saw anything about the limitation of the companions per play-throw, that is the real problem to me, but i know it would require a lot of work .-. and its not happening, i don't have much time usually neither, so i hope i will be able to mod even if is just to interact with everyone when they are not in the party, if really ruins your game, hope you will be able to mod it to your preferences.

 

Anyway, its pretty unlikely that your wishes become true, so i would recommend you to take your time to consider your actions and create a character whom you are satisfy with so you are not always thinking on other classes and background content, and explore.

Edited February 20, 2017 by Piero