Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, by Obsidian Entertainment

So heads up on day 1 release according to reddit posts by devs:

1) There is apparently bug related to imported choices were not everyone is taken in account. Its fixed in in house build, but patch/hotfix that includes that fix won't be out until 15.2.

2) Path of the damned is unfinished balancing wise because they decided to focus on bug fixing, as result veteran difficult is more difficult than path of the damned, at least on some of key encounters.

I know that it was mentioned earlier in the thread that the cast of Critical Role is doing voice work in this game, but they've recently uploaded a hilarious video advertising it:

So I don't have my old saves. How does the game handle a new character? Are you stuck with a default world state? Or is it like mass effect where you can make the big decision but all the small stuff is pre-chosen?

edited 8th May '18 5:55:37 PM by Ghilz

All in all, it's not bad, I'd say. You get a choice of six world states, each of which pairs off a god/final decision with a general temperament: Benevolent Soul (Hylea), Fair and Balanced (Berath), Survival of the Fittest (Galawain), Dark Times (Rymrgand), Keeper of Secrets (Woedica), and Everything Bad (Wael). I believe those are just the gods you made your pledge to, though, because the game does still let you choose what your final decision for the souls was.

You won't get some of the Old Save Bonus RP nods, but your race, class, background, and skills all still come up quite a bit in dialogue, and from what I've seen so far, the game still does Obsidian's usual thing of having a lot of retcon-ish dialogue choices so you can sort of make up your past as you go ("I thought Revan was a man," that sort of thing).

Everything Bad, incidentally, means every companion is dead, you made a pledge to each god and reneged on all of them, and all quests were resolved in the worst possible way after taking the aftermath into account. Which is still kind of hilarious.

edited 9th May '18 4:22:19 AM by Unsung

You can also generate a custom world state in the options menu. (Though it is a apparently slightly bugged. I picked the ending for Edér's personal quest where his scepticism is strengthened and he becomes mayor of Dyrford Village, but the game for some reason treats as if it his personal quest was never completed at all.

The game took a million hours to install despite me completely preloading it a few days before, so I haven't played that much of it yet, but I'm enjoying what I've played.

Gameplay feels a lot smoother than the first one, although I haven't been in enough combat yet to get a feel for the new mechanics.

As I said, I'm not very far in the story, but what I've seen so far is more compelling than Pillars 1's starting storylines.

So far the glitches are just Loads and Loads of Loading, which seems to get worse the longer you leave the game on. Also, I imported a save where I got the mayor ending for Eder but he's acting like he was in the Night Market instead. It wouldn't be an Obsidian launch if it weren't buggy, but this feels less stable than Pillars 1 and Tyranny were at launch.

Still, I'm loving the game so far.

The Eder thing is part of the import bug I mentioned before(another part is that on imported save it might not recognize you took Orlan baby :p It does work on obsidian saves because for some bizarre reason Benevolent Soul legacy has Vela in it), its even named on the known issues list on Steam sticky threads.

Guess it's a good thing I'm traveling out of town for a few days. Maybe by the time I get home the bugs regarding save transfers will be patched. Can't wait to see what my decisions regarding Aloth, Eder and Pallegina affect their characters in Deadfire.

edited 9th May '18 11:36:44 PM by ITNW1989

I think I'll do what I usually do and wait a week or so before purchasing it.

On a different note; the humor in this game is downright fantastic. Actually, everything in general feels just a bit more tightly and neatly written than in PoE1.

Does it use the text UI from Tyranny with the clickable words and terms you can use to get more context?

A big weakness of the first game was how hard it was to know the world you were in, especially early in the game.

Yup. Many in-universe phrases, key terms or information can be hovered over to get some insight as to what the hell they're saying. Especially helpful in the beginning, since many of the people you run into are from the Republics, so you get a reasonable translation to their many phrases, unlike Pallegina in the first game where you had to rely on context all the time.

Since Obsidian Entertainment has a reputation of buggy releases, I'm going to take this opportunity to finish the first game.

None of the bugs I've encountered have been game breaking. The game's been a lot of fun so far - gonna try some mods out this weekend, I think.

Started playing

A) Is the parchment listing tutorials when a new one is available supposed to be blank without any icon?

B) had a room be just all black, except for the UI, was weird.

I don't think the tutorial names are supposed to be blank, no. I thought they had names at one point, but you're right, they don't now.

There's a fade-in/out that happens when you enter or leave an area. Sometimes it seems to take an oddly long time to finish loading. I can remember the load time bug happening with other Unity games, but I'm not sure if that's the same thing here.

It does indeed seem that the save transfers are bugged; my conversations with Eder indicated that he'd joined the secret society of pro-Eothasians than becoming Dyrford's mayor, and Vela doesn't appear in the beach after the shipwreck. I certainly hope they address this soon.

Also, the fact that I get to have Vox Machina's voices as my character's voice convinced me that I need to play as a Bear Scout (Ranger/Rogue multiclass) just so I can fully RP as Vex.

Some of the conversation timers are weird. I recruit Tekēhu, take exactly one step and immediately his romance dialogue starts.

I think the romance dialogues start as soon as you hit +1 favor with them. Which, with certain characters, can happen pretty much as soon as you finish your first conversation with them, depending on what you say.

Yeah the romance system is really broken; I have no interest in companions hitting on me 5 minutes after not being an asshole to them, which is made even worse by their talk about making it more nuanced. In fact, Josh Sawyer himself wasn't involved in consulting any of that.

edited 12th May '18 5:10:12 AM by UltraWanker

Am I the only one who finds romance sidequests really annoying? I only ever do them for the sake of my inner completionist and achievement hunter or unless they provide actual tangible gameplay benefits.

Nah you're not the only one.

The romance dialogue is fine, it's just the fact it triggers so soon that's a problem X_X

edited 12th May '18 11:01:51 AM by Ghilz

what's the consensus on Deadfire so far? worth getting? i watched one LP so far and the production values look incredible compared to the first.

• The Good: ship mechanics, interesting world, improved locales.
• The Bad: Weak writing, some voice actors are mediocre at best.
• The Wierd: Broken romance system, and the save import registers the wrong decisions at times.

Also heard some people are experiencing bugs and peformance issues. Might wait on a patch.

edited 12th May '18 12:27:22 PM by UltraWanker

well i never finished the first one because i didn't understand the mechanics at the time and got stuck combat-wise so the import system isn't a big deal for me