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Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Yeah, having shitload of companions is a waste of effort if they're not interesting enough for me to replay the game with them. Having new companions in the WM expansion was also dumb. By the time you reach WM you already have your party full and most players will be unlikely to switch at that point.
 

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
Having new companions in the WM expansion was also dumb. By the time you reach WM you already have your party full and most players will be unlikely to switch at that point.

Zahua (another Fenstermaker character) was cool. Devil of Caroc - meh. Maneha was cancer.
 

Projas

Information Superhighwayman
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2016
Messages
1,202
Location
Best Republic
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Maneha only worked within the context of WM part 2 precisely beause of her dilemma and its thematic connection to the plot of WM. Take that away and she's beyond bland.
 

Rev

Arcane
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
1,180
Shows, he indeed took part in pre-production of Deadfire, tho 7 is not a lot fewer than the 8 they made for PoE1.
You're right, but three of them were already companions in PoE so they needed less work since their personality and traits were already established in the previous game.
 

santino27

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,679
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Yeah, my fav part is;

Hypothetically, I have a few things I would want to play with. I don't want to tip my hand, so pardon the vagueness. One would be having fewer, but far deeper and more interconnected companions - interconnected both with respect to one another and with respect to the overall plot. "FEWER?! FUCK THAT," you say. But everything is zero-sum in this business, and every companion we add takes a ton of time to write and implement. So yes, fewer. But better. More memorable. More like a real group of people. Less likely to be collecting dust in your stronghold.

Shows, he indeed took part in pre-production of Deadfire, tho 7 is not a lot fewer than the 8 they made for PoE1.

Well, Xoti at least was a stretch goal that was achieved, right? So it was initially 6 instead of 8 (if we're pretending they didn't expect to hit that goal). :P
 

BilboBaggins

Educated
Joined
May 11, 2014
Messages
91
That dagger looks they took the design of Sting from The Lord of the Rings movies and made some minor tweaks to it.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
The gameplay will still be boring trash because they refuse to give people fun spells to fuck around with.

Except for that Tentacle spell they added in. Or the vortex pulling spell which I use all the time. Or the various other high-level abilities. Faggot.
yeah man planting a mine that deals damage is really fun
100% innovative spell design donut steal pls
the vortex one at least is cool and can set up for other abilities.
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
809
Location
Valhalla
First off, I love your Brikoleur account, Prime.

Secondly:

I'm going full hype train for this game. It's constantly looking like it's going to be the "Baldur's Gate II" of this franchise.

I mean, people don't realize that BGII was so well recieved because they took what people liked from the first game, and they improved or removed what people didn't like. Pillars I had some issues, for sure.
The main things that Pillars II needs to improve(massively) to make it a masterpiece is:
Make the Stronghold better, more interactive, and mean more to the plot.
Status: Possibly. As a Normandy II style traveling home base with upgrades, we might see some really good shit come from it. Random encounters on the sea will be a massive plus.
Make the combat more White-Marchy, less PoE Vanilla.
Status: Looks like that's the case with Sawyer's bragging. Enemy encounters that are less about positioning and more about reacting to the crowd control abilities of your enemies means better. And there's going to be fewer encounters too, because -fuck- the slog that is the second act of pillars. Jumping Jesus.
Make the world more interesting, especially the worldbuilding itself.
Status: Jury's out. Some of the stuff shown is really fucking cool, and there's a lot of unique ideas. They really need to bring in the more unique aspects and we need to see more of them. Lots of the dungeons in Pillars were kind of uninteresting, and it was only until shit like Durgan's Battery that we started to see some seriously cool as fuck dungeons. I know this is mostly a graphical effect, but that whole puzzle of opening the battery, followed by the cutscene was really nice. It gave the area some oomph which MANY of the vanilla dungeons lacked.
I would honestly take fewer dungeons if they were all at baseline as good as Durgan's Battery.
What they're really going to need to be doing is embracing crazier aspects of the lore. The Vithrack are a great start, go from there. Go full Moorcock if you have to, I don't care and neither does anyone else. The Deadfire Archipelago should have a weird/interesting thing in every location. Not something that's as random as ass like Numenera where there's constant, nonstop "look at this thing we rolled on three tables to come up with. It's uh, a deer that switches from fur to scales and sings in dead languages, but only ones that were snuffed out by violence but only if a young man with a broken foot walks past!" None of that shit. You can make it weird without it being boring and so esoteric it's lame as fuck.
I want to see more religion, and I want to see how it impacts people's lives. I want to see how Eothasians react to their god """returning""" and I want to see how everyone else reacts generally to the events of PoE. Animancy was common in the Dyrwood. What's it's like here? There is SO MUCH SHIT they can throw in this game to make it fucking mindblowing.

My only real concern is that there are too many returning characters and it's more annoying than interesting, sadly. I'm glad Durance isn't back, because the idea of a hamfisted companion side quest where you collect the three things and then blow up magran in the most boring biowarean fashion would make me cringe in pain as I remembered curing the genophage in Mass Effect 3 - easily the shittiest thing I could imagine. Give us new people - make them cool as fuck, but keep the shoutouts to a minimum. This is a new world and a new everything, I don't want Vanilla PoE shit anymore. Give me NEW SHIT!

More... Items...

BG2 had great items. WM fixed it some, but just 10 soulbound items is def not enough.
 

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