Pillars of Eternity

^^ None of the factions are as evil as in FNV, but I wouldn't say FNV's factions are especially cartoonish if the comparison is Skyrim. I also feel like they're not as fully implemented in Deadfire as in New Vegas, just because there aren't nearly as many actual settlements or NP Cs. They're more fleshed out as opposed to three of the endings being variations on what is largely the same campaign for most of the game, but the setting doesn't feel as lived-in or expansive.

Edited by Unsung on May 27th 2020 at 1:44:29 AM

So I just spent most of my money upgrading my Keep, buying the defenses except for one of the walls. My Prestige is 10 and Defense is 15. I hope that will do for now.

Oh and when given the choice what to do with the old Watcher's soul I just chose the option to give me knowledge from it.

I don't know if I particularly care for the new companion, Kana. Do I get a better one any time soon? Neither his skills nor his personality interest me much. Granted, I haven't really tried to engage with his class much. Maybe I'll try tomorrow.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 27th 2020 at 7:26:50 AM

You'll probably have already found Sagani and Pallegina (ranger and paladin) by the time you read this. If you go toward Dyrford Village you can pick up Hiravias and Grieving Mother (druid and cipher). The other companions are part of the DLC.

If you really dislike Kana, you can always replace him with a hired adventurer, but chanters are pretty powerful in these games, definitely my favourite class. Easy-to-manage buffs and, the big thing, the best summons in the game. Of course you don't necessarily need one if you're keeping Durance. A priest can handle all your healing and buffing needs, and Pallegina can be an off-healer/secondary tank.

I found Sagani and Grieving Mother but no Druid or Paladin.

GM instantly replaced Kana, though. I like her and her abilities a lot.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 28th 2020 at 7:24:33 AM

The paladin's in Defiance Bay, so if you went to Dyrford you'll be seeing her later. (Near the docks.) The druid is on the road through Stormwall Gorge, maybe a little ways off of it? Redheaded orlan with a spear and an eyepatch.

Yeah I just got him now.

It is a shame to hear Pillars 1 sold pretty well for a game like this but Deadfire, the apparently much better game, either underperformed or just broke even. I've heard Sawyer later amended it to breaking even but the point is, it didn't light the sales figures on fire and so there's no real plans for a third game.

Somebody elsewhere guessed that perhaps there's just an oversaturation of Medieval European Fantasy games. Pathfinder, Witcher, Original Sin.... In fact, I saw a lot of talk comparing Deadfire and Original Sin 2 and trying to figure out why the latter was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. I can't really guess since I have not played either.

I haven't mentioned it at all yet but the music in this game is awesome. To me, musi is probably the most important form of storytelling. Try to imagine the best-written and best-acted scene of all time and then put Yakety Sax over it. Suddenly it won't be quite as dramatic or emotional. Anyway, this song owns and I wish there was an extended version on YT.

Also on character notes, after talking to Durance about the Saint's War, my opinion of him has changed a lot. Even before that though, his other dialogue options hinted at a nationalism that I didn't expect. I originally pictured him as some sort of wandering religious fanatic, largely detached from things like politics. But he really likes the Dyrwood and hates Eothosians. He also basically agrees with Radric's methods on how to deal with "heretics" so it's a bit odd to have him traveling with Eder. Far from being apolitical, he's a rather extreme patriot. I wonder if he was actually thee during the final battle or if it's just his manner of speech. Was his staff the Godhammer? Time will tell.

I dunno if I'm supposed to be in Stormwall Gorge yet. Level 5. just got Sagani. This game, much like BG 1, just makes me want to explore. So I'm heading to that village marked on the map. Anyway, I ran into a group of 5 Feral Druids and they kicked my ass many times. But I figure, I gotta get used to fighting groups of mages. In fact, maybe I'm at just teh right level and the game is taking a difficulty spike. I gotta git gud. I'm on Normal, by the way Changed it up ages ago. In any event I'm really glad to have Sagani. I've desperately wanted a ranged physical character for a long time. Maybe it's my BG 1 training talking where the guide I read before starting the game said "have everyone outfitted with crossbows (or was it bows?) so you can kill the Goblins before they get into range." In any event, my mages were all dead when I won the day but they did their job of widdling down the numbers. Once it was just two of the Druids left Eder, Sagani and Kana in his Heavy Armor had no problem finishing the job.

Also holy shit, I have Benevolent 1. When did I get that? Maybe after offering to help Sagani? I just wanted a cool new companion. Maybe I should have gone Eothas Priest. I'm bumbling into goodness even as I play my usual evil runs.It just goes to show that a polite manner is good, no matter what you do.

It's an interesting philosophical conundrum - if your hghest values are Honesty and keeping to your word, what of promises made via deception? I'm at Dyrford Village and I let the girl go because I was sent out on my task with false information. I would have gladly handed her over if he had just told me the truth. But I feel guilty because we had an agreement and I feel I reneged on it. Well, I'm Honest 3 now at any rate. I also pissed off some House.

Hey, there's some banter. Eder asking Sagani to pet her fox is very Alistair. In fact, I notice Dyrford Village seems to always generate party banter.

Tried taking on The Dweller Bounty for an hour before giving up. Didn't help that I had used my sleep bonus to get +2 Mechanics so I could finish the Blood Legacy quest at the Skaen temple ruins. I needed Lockpcik 8 to get through the door to the final area.. I would assume there's another way in there but I couldn't find it and it and I spent way too long wandering around lost. In any event, The Dweller is Level 8, I'm only Level 5. I feel no shame in getting my ass handed to me over and over and over again. I shoulda just taken the hint nd gave up sooner. And I'm sure somebody beat it at Level 4 and Solo but I'm not them.

And now I feel like the perfect failure. I couldn't defeat the bandit bounty either and also Wymund at the Skaen Temple kicked my ass, too. Three strikes and I'm out. The Dweller was actually easier than those other fights, I came close to beating it once. The only bright side of all this is I got tons of money from selling the loot from teh Skaen temple.

I feel like with some proper preparation I might do better but I dunno. How the hell do you Enchant things in this game? I keep seeing all my equipment has 0 or 2/12 Enchantments and it bugs the hell outta me. Those could probably help a lot here.

As could building more stuff at my stronghold to gain buffs and maybe maing more use of food.

I changed Aloth out for Hiravias just to try out something different and I dumped Kana for Grieving Mother who is a way more interesting character with a cooler ability set, IMO.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 29th 2020 at 12:09:27 PM

Durance is a pretty horrible person. There's a reason nobody else in the party likes him. The misogyny, the racism, the xenophobia, the general assholery...

Still, he's useful enough as a party member.

Edited by M84 on May 30th 2020 at 2:57:28 AM

Despite everyone else wanting to bang me, Edér friend zoned me and it was simultaneously refreshing and insulting.

But he really is Best Bro.

I think enchanting in the first game is just done by right-clicking the item and then there's an Enchant option in the description, isn't there?

So yeah, it's that BG 1 idea again — if an area feels too hard, come back to it later. There are a lot of quick and easy quests in the big city, as per usual in these games. Also something I should've probably said earlier: there's no combat XP in the POE games. You get a little XP for killing new enemies and entering new maps, but most of the experience in the game comes from finishing quests.

Most of the wilderness areas are probably doable at level 5, but yeah, those bounty fights are deliberately some low-end bonus boss (depending on your level) kinds of fights. They'll be there for later. Easier ways to make money in Defiance Bay.

It's a real shame about Deadfire, especially given how polished and smooth its RTWP was. No way for Obsidian to know DOS 2 was going to come along and make it so everybody actually really *wanted* turn-based combat, when for years it was a struggle to get people to play anything that wasn't first-person action.

Yeah I figured there had to be either no combat XP or very, very little of it. I just noticed while killing a bunch of spiders that you get XP for completing a beastiary entry, though.

And I managed to beat Wymund at level 5! Sheer dumb luck combiend with bringing Hiravias and also the +3 Might bonus from Brighthollow won me the day. Hiravias' Beetle Shell ability really is perfect here as Eder's main function is to keep the rest of us from dying.

That's the real trick in a lot of these fights. You have to keep the enemies off you long enough to get your buffs on your party and/or debuffs on the enemy. Otherwise your party, especially the casters, will be dead in seconds.

And you're right, Enchanting is right there when you right click the armor. I totally missed it. My bad.

It has little to do with Deadfire's bad sales numbers, as my problems with the game come from having played it, but I do think it was worse in a number of ways than Po E 1. I also think that RTWP isn't as widely enjoyed as folks seem to think. For those reasons it selling poorly never really surprised me.

What really killed my interests in the Po E series was just... the world and characters of Deadfire. It's such a dreary place filled with by and large unlikeable people. I don't hate crapsack worlds as a rule, they can be places for wonderful stories, but the whole place of Deadfire is such a dreary slog it just started turning me off the further and further into it I got.

That left me engaging with the game strictly through its mechanics, and RTWP is such a mire of either uninteractive wastes of time or constant micro for minor but necessary benefits. Rare is the fight where the systems actually end up feeling good. Add to that the need to balance resources through the rest system (which granted, isn't a real restriction as access to it is plentiful and time means nothing, but it feels bad to rest as it *feels* like wasting time) and that system ends up a source of frustration as well. So when story and combat is out, what left is just juggling loot and the inventory system and damn if I haven't been wishing RP Gs would excise that from their DNA for a while now.

But yeah, before this degrades to another rant by me about RP Gs needing less filler fights and filler loot, I do really feel like they made a misstep while writing for it. It feels like they wanted the world to feel REAL and they really succeeded in that through attention to detail and good writing, but they focused on the realness of all systems being corrupt and nothing ever being wholly good (or evil) that they forgot to add hopespots to the whole thing. When I play the game I feel there's no hope for a better tomorrow a respite or a goal for the character to aim towards other than just sorting out their personal mess. Sure, that's what real life often is but reliving that for 100 hours isn't why I enjoy the stories I do. Deadfire's world was more depressing and dreary than Tyranny's, and that was them explicitly writing an evil campaign.

At least in Po E 1 most things where shite but there was a glimmer of a rainbow now and then. If not hope for the future, but at least the feeling of old wrongs righted.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on May 29th 2020 at 12:32:34 PM

I disagree there was no way to know.

Original Sin 1's combat already blew POE 1's combat out of the water with its emphasis on environmental effects, comboing effects and solid systems - and was generally the most applauded part of that game. That DOS 2 was going to iterate on that should've come as no shock to anyone.

Heck one of the thing I had the most issue with playing POE 1 was that I had played DOS 1 already and POE 1's combat felt awful compared to the former.

Edited by Ghilz on May 29th 2020 at 5:51:03 AM

I love the world of Deadfire and I think it’s pretty light relative to Po E 1 so far. But also I may be biased from a recent interest in colonial/corporate history and tbh Deadfire is positively cheery compared to the real world.

^^ Apples to oranges. I'm not saying DOS's environmental combat isn't amazing, but it was an incredible amount of work for a first game that didn't necessarily do blockbuster sales. DOS 2 was a quantum leap forward and deserves all the love it's gotten, but it came out when Deadfire was already most of the way done, and people were not starving for turn-based RP Gs at that point — see Skyrim and The Witcher. The tide turning against RTWP wasn't really written on the wall at that point.

I wasn't madly in love the first game's combat either, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that as far as RTWP combat goes, specifically, that AI, UI, auto-pause, etc — that spectrum of automation vs. granularity — that's the most fluid and polished that particular style of combat has been. But that's not to say that's the only kind of RPG combat you can do or even the best. On the other hand, I think a lot of DOS's openness comes at the expense of its ability to tell its story or write its dialogue. So there's still a sliding scale there.

Some errors in your statement

DOS 1 sold faster than POE 1 for a while. From its release on june to september, it sold half a million copies. It took 4 more months for POE to beat that number (released in march, beat it by october). So DOS 1 wasnt exactly some small competition they shouldn't have been aware of.

Second, you talk about as if DOS 2 came out of nowhere. It was crowdfunded, with regular updates, most of them visible to non backers (though one would expect any firm worth its salt would to keep an eye on the competition. It's called market research) So the "It came out mid way through production and changed the whole landscape with no warning" is a fantastic reading of the events at best. Heck, the Alpha for Original Sin 2 was out 4 months before Deadfire's crowdfund started. The Beta was out a month later.

Edited by Ghilz on May 29th 2020 at 7:49:11 AM

x5 I also found the second game bleaker than the first - given a choice, I know which I'd rather play again - but once I figured out which parts I had to ignore and which I could manipulate, I actually had a good amount of fun in Deadfire. Exploring all the little islands and shoals and things was the best part. I also liked the companions, loved the sidekicks, and the DLC were pretty enjoyable.

I do agree on Deadfire being bleaker. That said I did like it more than POE 1. POE 1 predates Tyranny, so it lacks the convenient "Hover over a term to get an explanation" thing. And that makes parts of POE, especially the beginning of the game, REALLY hard to follow, where a lot of names and terms are thrown at the player (and if you suck at names like I do, that's a nightmare), so its hard to know what people are referring to. Deadfire never lost me this way because of the better UI.

I wonder how much Avellone's departure effected POE 2 and its tone? I will try to ask Sawyer over on Something Awful.

^^^^I didn't say DOS 1 was a failure and I didn't say DOS 2's alpha wasn't promising, but neither of those things can be read as a self-evident signpost telling you "This is the only possible route to success" without applying a hefty dose of hindsight. Doesn't really seem that fantastic or far-fetched a reading to me.

Like, sure, it's this obvious error in judgment *now*, but being aware that DOS was popular and the sequel is shaping up nicely, and knowing that it's the next killer app that you *need* to be trying to emulate — those are two different things. Being a hit also doesn't necessarily mean saturating the market and crowding out your competitors. The hope in a niche genre like this one is generally for a rising tide that lifts all boats, one RPG that leaves the people hungry for more, even if they have to struggle through some holdovers from the olden days. Didn't happen here, most of the time it cycles downward with the occasional rebound, but still, if you're going to be any kind of RPG dev, that's pretty much where you've decided you're going to live.

Still don't really see Deadfire as being particularly bleak myself, especially when comparing it to the first game, but we've had this discussion before. Might want to be careful of spoilers, though, since Nikkolas is still on the first game.

Edited by Unsung on May 29th 2020 at 7:46:30 AM

It'll be interesting to hear what Nikkolas thinks of Deadfire, if they ever get to it, since I recall them being a big fan of Dragon Age II and comparisons between those games were rife back around the former's release.

That is interesting to hear given I've largely seen only praise for Deadiire compared to POE 1 and obviously DA 2 was - and still kinda is - a super hated game and few would consider it better than DAO. I think they do different things well.

I guess I'll see. I totally plan to buy the game next Wednesday off GOG with its sale going on. Gonna get the Obsidian Edition with all DLC for $23. I can never totally predict my moods but I'm having so much fun with POE 1 I don't anticipate not wanting to play the sequel as soon as I'm finished here.

Also apparently Deadfire is coming to Switch. Well, I just learned about this, maybe you all already knew I think it's a good omen, especially if it does okay on the Switch. Maybe it foretells of a continuation of the franchise. Of course, the Switch is ludicrously expensive these days. I really do regret not buying one a year or two ago when SMTV was announced. My GF really wants one for Animal Crossing but I can't afford this shit. Maybe if it goes down I'll get her a Switch or at least Deadfire while another friend or family gets her the console. She's the one who got me into WRPG's in the first place.

Edited by Nikkolas on May 30th 2020 at 4:18:10 AM

Sure, we can debate on the bleakness level of Deadfire as a place/setting. That is relatively subjective, certainly. As I said in my previous post, I don't even have a problem with bleakness in general.

The key to understanding why I think bleakness destroys the play experience of Deadfire is that "you can do nothing right" is baked into the games DNA in how it's written and structured. A lot of the games quests are written so that even by completing them, the player "fails" somehow.

For an example of this I'll use Maia Rua's companion quest, which I remember so well because it was the point where I went "OK, screw this game" and stopped playing. So spoilers for that from here on.

In the quest you play an unwitting accomplice to some rather destructive assassinations by delivering the missives initiating them. The whole point of the quest line, as far as I can figure out, is to make the player question simply doing stuff based on the word of someone and to get them to think through their actions rather than just doing what the quest log tells them to.

Stuff like this has been done before by other games, by Po E 1 and even by Deadfire itself and it can be some good writing. But where Deadfire fails on this is that in the quest there's no in game method of letting the game know that you've twigged on to these missives being a problem and would like to do something about it. All you can do is either not accept the mission and thus failing to do a companion quest, quests which are usually especially beloved by the players since they let you learn more about your characters, let someone get killed by a mob before you get any real information on the situation or go through the mission. While doing this stuff I, the player, was sitting there thinking "something is off about this, these missives are probably bad stuff", but there was no way for my character to express these misgivings in game.

That means that I've already understood the message the developers are sending, but that the devs haven't included a way for me to communicate that into game. But I choose to trust the devs, so I continue with the quest, hoping that maybe they've just structured this quest in a way that lets me act on these feelings later, towards the end. Fix some of the mistakes my character is making when they realize what's going on. But that never materializes. There's a revelation and some conversation on the morals of the actions, but even then, no in game way for my character to go back and try to mend what they broke. It could be too little too late in universe at this point, I'm fine with there being consequences even though I'd feel a bit cheated, but fine. They'd at least acknowledge it. Instead nothing.

That means that the only right solution for this quest was to never engage with it in the first place. To not engage with the games systems. To not play. If that's the lesson you want to teach your players as a game dev, then I don't know what to tell you. But hey, I learned that lesson real good. Like I said, haven't touched the game since.

To be clear, that's not the only time a quest in Deadfire is structured like that. There's various degrees of it going on all over the game. There's a lot of you either acting on incomplete information or not given you the tools to act on the information you do have. That's why I find the whole game so damn frustrating and depressing. It's just not why I play games or engage with a story.

Edited by GabrieltheThird on May 30th 2020 at 4:15:55 PM

Oh, that. The KOTOR 2 issue. Bleak's not really the word I'd use in that case — dark, sure, cynical, definitely, and frustrating, okay, maybe — but bleak has other connotations, to me.

But yeah, I've been having these discussions since TSL came out. And DA 2, while we're on the subject. Personally I don't think that just because you can't succeed absolutely and unambiguously on quests that it means whatever successes you did achieve lose all meaning, and I find that more interesting and fulfilling, not less. Doing anything is hard, doing the right thing harder still.

But I'm not going to tell you you have to like it. That just comes down to personal taste.

Edited by Unsung on May 30th 2020 at 5:56:36 AM

Well said, and I had the same experience; a lot of getting through Deadfire came down to refusing to play the game, which I also find quite unsatisfying, but there were enough good points to make up for it.

KotOR II, IIRC, is also a game Nikkolas likes. I think they're in for a treat.

Edited by Tarlonniel on May 30th 2020 at 6:15:31 AM

I have not done Maia’s quest yet so I will get back to you on that.