Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, by Obsidian Entertainment

I actually liked the "Shaggy Dog" Story nature of the character quests. None of them find the answers they are looking for or the macguffins they dedicated their lives to finding...and that doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing. Sure, it's disappointing, but they're still alive. They can still move on and make something out of their lives.

The thing almost all of them have in common is coping with failure and disappointment. It's arguably one of the most important lessons a person can learn in life and one that really ought to be seen more in media.

Sort of a slightly less trite version of 'the journey is its own reward' — the journey is everything, so that's why what you make of it along the way is so important. You can't really sit around waiting for a sign or an inspiration. Most never do, and the ones who do see some light in the sky or divine writing on the wall — Durance, Waidwen, Thaos — all end up making a real mess of things. Higher purposes are overrated.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 10:36:01 AM

Durance (assuming you got the good ending of his quest) and Waidwen at least managed to get something from their experiences. Even if in Durance's case it was just "I screwed up and gave my devotion to someone who didn't deserve it".

And Waidwen managed to somewhat figure out what Eothas wanted people to understand all along: that they didn't need him or the other gods. Sadly for Waidwen, he's not able to do anything with that knowledge since that was the day his life would end. He's at least able to help you in the Beyond one way or another (either by aiding you in battle or by accepting oblivion and thus helping you convince the dragon to do the same).

The Engwithans in general showed the folly of waiting for a higher purpose. They devoted so much effort to find the higher purpose and meaning in life, only to fall into despair when they realized there is no higher purpose. Just the one we make for ourselves. They couldn't handle that, and killed themselves just to create a fake higher purpose.

So Thaos' whole life was dedicated to protecting the lie of a higher purpose, thinking that the rest of the world would react like Engwith did if faced with the truth.

Except the characters' sidequests ultimately show that he's full of shit. All of them end up losing the higher purpose they crafted for themselves or had given to them, yet all of them are potentially able to find new reasons to live and move on from their disappointment.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 1:33:19 AM

I think the idea with Waidwen is that maybe Eothas learned a little something as well. But yeah, the theme with the villains is that even if they learn anything from their mistakes, those mistakes carry such a heavy cost that it's hardly worth one man's lesson learned.

Refuting the gods feels very much like a coda to Mask of the Betrayer, and the WOTC corporate veto that prevented players from truly taking the battle to the Wall of the Faithless and finishing the Second Crusade — the first POE is a bit bland in places, but it really ramps up for its finale. Those two final conversations with Iovara and Thaos are really exactly how I want my RPG to end: to feel like your companions have been on their own journey, and have their own thoughts on how the Watcher has guided them, for good or ill. I like that they can find that sense of inner purpose for themselves — I also like that they can falter, and I especially liked the way it wasn't always obvious, on a first playthrough, that characters like Aloth, Sagani, and Zahua were listening to every little thing you said, and it built on itself rather than hinging on more obvious decision points.

Eder, of course, is emblematic of the whole thing. The character who would be the obvious hero of your average RPG, who it seems should have been the hero if we were playing through the story of the Saint's War — but fifteen years on, he's a pariah in his own hometown who relegates himself to sidekickdom. Nowhere is the game's deconstruction/reconstruction switch clearer than in Eder's ongoing series of epiphanies. You can't cling to the past as it was, but neither should you burn it all down and give up.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:07:46 AM

And by the sequel Eder, depending on the ending of the first game, can have made something of his life too. I personally prefer him becoming the mayor of a town.

The sequel really encourages you to make him your main sidekick again too. Not only is he useful in combat, but his character arc for obvious reasons is heavily tied to Eothas. He more than anyone else in your party was heavily affected by the Saint's War, the war Eothas started.

I did also like how Thaos kind of took the piss out of your companions too. He called them out on being directionless losers looking to the Watcher for inspiration. It's not all that different from looking to fake gods for inspiration when you think about it. Not that we're necessarily supposed to assume Thaos is correct, of course.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 2:11:47 AM

The Dyrwood is Eder's country, Eothas is his god — really, he's got as least as much claim to this story as you do. In another game, the Watcher would just be Eder's rich, eccentric, unremovable plot-mandated NPC companion with the funny hallucinations.

Thaos's Break Them by Talking sequence, and Iovara's slightly kinder Armor Piercing Questions — Eothas's too — are my favourite moments in both games. The moments where you question the decisions you've made.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:15:41 AM

Eder and Tekehu seem to be the characters most tied to the main story. Eder for his connection to Eothas and his previous relationship with The Watcher, and Tekehu for his connection to the native Huana culture. Xoti too to a slightly lesser extent given her outspoken worship of Gaun — something that can put her at odds with Eder.

Serafen and Maia are mostly tied to their factions' sidequests. Pallegina too though she also has a previous bond to The Watcher and she has a minor character arc concerning her own godlike nature (especially since she's stationed in a land where godlike are revered rather than scorned).

Aloth's character arc seems to be essentially cleaning up the plot of the previous game, given that he's dedicated himself to dealing with the Leaden Key one way or another.

The sidekicks barring Rekke and Mirke get their time to shine in the DLC of course. Rekke serves as a bit of a potential Sequel Hook since his existence hints that maybe the Engwithans didn't realize the truth of the universe among other things. Mirke...she just hangs around and drinks all day.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 2:18:47 AM

I'm still wondering what the deal is with Xoti's deepening darkness. The burden of carrying all those souls weighing her down makes intuitive sense, but I'm still not sure what the significance of it is actually meant to be. And what's the deal with Soul Collectors wearing cloaks and carrying lanterns? And what's the relationship between Rymrgand and Gaun, hmm? I was really expecting that to be a major plot point, but it never was.

I kind of wish Aloth and Pallegina's sidequests felt a little more dynamic. Lore-wise they're interesting, particularly that Thaos flashback with the Wahaki, but while both are likable, they both feel a bit detached from events. Pallegina in particular seems remote and impassive. It makes sense given how things (probably) went for her when she was more outspoken and impassioned in the first game, but it makes the VTC feel like a bit too easy of a choice, too much of a default, NCR sort of option. And it prevents her from interacting much with, say, Fassina or Ydwin, which could have given us some worldbuilding for the Republics.

Rekke doesn't get much in the way of quests in the DLC, but he does seem to have quite a few tantalizing hints about his background (not just about Yezuha itself, but about who he is and why he was put on the ship in the first place) if you bring him along. The things he's surprised to find are familiar to him are quite interesting — although admitted more so before a certain few books in the Restricted Section pretty much spelled things out.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:29:52 AM

Rekke discovering various tidbits that remind him of home are hints that Yezuha was not as isolated from this part of the world as he originally believed. It's clear that the old empires of the Huana, Engwith, and Yezuha had previous contact and their cultures did influence each other. Which begs the question of what Yezuha's God truly is...

Rymrgand, Gaun, and Berath all embody death but in different forms. Berath is death in its inevitability. Rymrgand is death in the form of entropy. Gaun? Gaun is death as part of a cycle of renewal.

My headcanon is that Soul Collectors are what become of Reapers who betray the renewal aspect by refusing to relinquish the souls, giving into darkness. At this point they become more akin to Rymrgand's aspect of death.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 2:37:48 AM

I was just wondering as I played if there was going to be an official connection made, some ancient temple where we saw that all the different embodiments of life, death, reincarnation, and all points beyond and in-between were somehow connected, that Rymrgand and Eothas were perhaps, like the Pallid Knight and the Usher, two beings that are/were once one.

I was figuring the Soul Collectors were Reapers too, but I was kind of looking forward to seeing exactly how that came about.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:41:38 AM

It does say something about the mindset of the Engwithans — they made three different gods of death when they made their artificial pantheon.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 2:48:03 AM

I'm still wondering if they created the whole reincarnation system themselves, if they somehow infused people with soul energy, or if that was something that already existed that they found a way to harness.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 11:52:53 AM

Considering that the Engwithan machines were apparently inspired by the powers of Watchers according to the Seeker, it's likely that there was some natural reincarnation mechanism at work. The Engwithan machines simply harnessed and redirected it to create and empower their gods. With the side effect of tying it to the machines — so when Eothas broke the Great Wheel at Ukaizo, he completely messes up reincarnation.

Remember that the Seeker, who worked on the Crucible which was essentially a proof-of-concept prototype of the machines at Ukaizo, was already a reincarnation of the Survivor (assuming the Survivor was the first one).

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 2:56:13 AM

There seems to have definitely been something, since magic is tied to souls and Engwith definitely had access to that. I'm just curious as to the timeframe, I suppose — if there was ever a point at which maybe there wasn't even any kind of reincarnation, based on the whole "grinding our souls to dust" concept that Thaos mentions. Maybe living bodies gathered a certain amount of soul energy, but there was no continuity of individual souls and the memories contained within — maybe it was all just random memory imprints that Watchers could pick up on, embedded in the background radiation of life itself, or something.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 12:06:48 PM

It's pretty obvious that a lot of knowledge about how souls work was lost when the Engwithans destroyed themselves. It's also becoming clear that even they didn't know everything about how souls worked.

True enough. Curious as to just how far the Engwithan rabbit hole goes, at this point.

One thing I'm wondering about is the gods' original physical bodies. Those things were massive flesh-and-blood constructs.

How exactly did the Engwithans make them, and where did they get the necessary components? Maybe it wasn't just the Engwithans' souls which were sacrificed to make them...

However they did it, it's yet another form of lost knowledge. Even the gods can't make new ones or seem to know how to rebuild them. Either that, or creating the gods' bodies required some finite resource that was used up completely by the time the Engwithans were done.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 3:21:00 AM

Well, adra seems to grow and can be infected. The adra colossus is oddly flexible while Eothas is inhabiting it. And chanting creates seemingly solid versions of beings out of soul energy. Maybe it's just a matter of having enough soul energy on hand, and the equivalent of the kind of matter transporter(/replicator?) technology Flaune Elette and company have been trying to perfect?

Or something. That's one thought. Kind of prefer that to the idea of almagamating them out of corpses or something, though. That seems a bit too much like Dragon Age's harvesters. On the other hand, Kazuwari does show how you can pump up the size of otherwise mortal creatures with enough soul energy.

It can't just be a matter of making things bigger, since nothing on Eora resembles the gods' appearances. It's possible that the Engwithans created them to be building size using...whatever...and then pumped them full of soul energy to make them bigger. Maybe that's another reason why the Crucible was built — to test the sizeshifting mechanic on the local wildlife.

I don't think it's simply chanting, since summoned beings eventually dissipate, while Wael's body is still present. Though the body does have to be continuously fed and cared for.

And it's pointed out by Ydwin (or was it Fassina?) that Eothas' adra colossus body is unusually flexible. Meaning adra shouldn't be that flexible normally and only Eothas' soul-fueled power is making movement possible.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 3:39:17 AM

Kith resemble the god's appearances. And what I'm saying is that I don't think it's just chanting, adra, the engineering of soul-infused leviathans, or transporter/replication technology alone, but the culmination of all of the Engwithans' researches into various forms of magic and animancy — perhaps a few branches of which we have yet to even see.

Or not. It's just spitballing for now.

I do realize that adra isn't normally that flexible. The fact that being filled with vast amounts of soul energy made it that way was the exact point I was making.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 12:42:37 PM

Some of the gods look superficially humanoid when you meet them, but others don't such as Wael and Rymrgand. And even the humanoid ones have very distinct features that aren't seen in kith.

It does speak to the Engwithans' bigotry that none of the gods resemble any kith besides the folk (the "humans" of the setting) and the elves. None of them look like Orlans or Aumaua. And the only one who resembles a Dwarf is the Usher, who is merely an aspect of Berath. Which is weird considering Engwith was supposed to be a somewhat cosmopolitan society, if Eothas' wistful description of Ukaizo as a gathering place of many peoples was any indication.

It's possible like you said that the gods' physical bodies were created using knowledge derived from Cignath Mor. Though even things like the Krakens are dwarfed by the gods' physical forms.

Edited by M84 on Jan 11th 2019 at 3:52:47 AM

But those are just the avatars the gods choose to interact with the Watcher in their mindscape, which don't necessarily resemble their physical bodies, since most of the gods have multiple different avatars anyway.

Although yes, I have actually wondered if the other forms of kith were at one point folk who were modified, the way the gods are able to create their own godlike. There's a hint dropped that folk like Xoti can also possess whatever divine spark the godlike have, since you can sacrifice Xoti to Rymrgand the same way you can Ydwin, Tekehu, or Pallegina.

I figured it was something special about Xoti due to her soul reaping.

Sure, but I was just sort of wondering — have we ever seen a godlike of rebirth? What if there could be godlikes that didn't actually look any different from anyone else?

Again, just speculation. But I thought it was interesting to consider.

We've never met a godlike of Eothas. Concept art indicates they'd look like a solar version of the Moon godlike, Sun godlike. So maybe they'd look like a less extreme version of Saint Waidwen.

Generally though, the one thing all godlike have in common is that their nature is very obvious. So it can be assumed that no godlike could be easily mistaken for an unaltered kith.

The most human-looking godlike is Pallegina, and that's only because she underwent an animantic procedure to weaken the connection between her and Hylea. Otherwise, she'd probably have a beak or something.

Edited by M84 on Jan 12th 2019 at 4:22:26 AM