Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Fredward]

Any portrait packs for this yet? The portrait selection is shit... again.

Seriously. I wanted to play a Moon Godlike cuz their models look great but the only portrait options are Bob (36) and Ted (41) from accounting, but blue.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Gamespot is shit, the worst gaming site

polygon

 

[Eisenheinrich]

In the german mainstream gaming press people and customers are already argueing zealously if Deadfire is truely full voice acted or if Obsidian lied to them. Because only in the beginning there's a narrator for the descripitve text and also CYAO-Elements are not voice acted. This is huge for some.

"People who watched the first twenty minutes on a stream will believe that everything is voice acted. This is done by purpose to lure more gamers into buying this scam. After that, you still have to read most text yourself."

I can't even ... what happened to the "Volk of Dichter and Denker?"

 

[Merlkir]

There is also that book I found on glanfaderpfan language which is written in a hilariously modern way. It talks all the linguistic nuances yet it is called "simple glanfathan". Imagine teaching any medieval villager or soldier about difference in pwgra and pygra with every little detail behind it. If it's "simple dictionary" just write word > meaning that's it. These are not in world books, they should be renamed into "designer's commentary".

Medieval (Eora is mostly quite late medieval, with many aspects far later) peasants wouldn't be learning languages from books, since they couldn't read and/or wouldn't have a use for it.
You're thinking of a phrase book, which did exist and were mainly intended for merchants.
(like this one: http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126612.html)

If we're talking about a full on language textbook, that would be read by the educated - scholars or nobles.
http://linguistics.oxfordre.com/vie...9384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-380

As for the name, It used to be a running joke at my uni that all the "Introduction into X" and "Simple X" courses were almost always the toughest ones. Academics can be pretty weird people.

 

[AwesomeButton]

"Historically" written in-world document from the pillars ii guidebook:

"A BOY visited my office holding palmfuls of what passes for currency on his side of the world. Without understanding the terms of release, his chieftain had signed away all right to their tribal land. And what did he take in exchange but a mere certificate of trading permissions along an already overused merchant route! Belfetto, every day we demonstrate the power of ink and parchment over traditional arms. I would pay a man his weight in azata shells if he could show me a nation that weaponized commerce as efficiently as we do. A pity that our Rauataian neighbors ignore the example and stretch their resources along such tight margins. Their soldiers, colonists, and even cannons must be constantly nourished and maintained with goods that no one on this side of the world possesses. By the time we have pulled away from these islands, Rauatai will have gained nothing but an iron shortage and some unwelcome diseases. We will be rich beyond imagining. It goes without saying that I had the meddlesome islander escorted back to the docks. The signatory of his “disagreeable” agreement I had promoted for his diligent paperwork. It is not our fault if these degenerates fail to understand the contracts they sign."

I wonder who or what might have inspired this passage...

They've really nailed the style though, haven't they.

Wait, what language is everybody actually "really" speaking? In PoE1, it was assumed that everybody was actually speaking Aedyran, which happens to be identical to English for your convenience. But they wouldn't be speaking Aedyran in the Deadfire, right?

I had to change my PC's name because I figured they would be pronouncing it differently in the Deadfire.

Spoiler

 

[SophosTheWise]

Wh ... what if it flops but the codex will actually like the game?

Not gonna happen. The Codex defines success as "an RPG that more than 100 people have heard of", so PoE 2 will be a massive success and therefore sucks.

 

[Daedalos]

Wh ... what if it flops but the codex will actually like the game?

Not gonna happen. The Codex defines success as "an RPG that more than 100 people have heard of", so PoE 2 will be a massive success and therefore sucks.

You mean less. The more niche it is, the more INCLINE it must be.

 

[Valtiel]

Some made up words i've heard are just scrambled italian words

 

[Pizzashoes]

Naval combat is lethal. I was drinking last night, and I ended up ramming my enemy's ship when my own had less than 10 hull points. Everybody died.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Josh has mashed up Italian, Occitan, and French. But I've never seen a complete dictionary of Vailian words, or I could play at deducting their phonetic laws and check if they are consistent

 

[Pizzashoes]

I am at the initial island still, but I am enjoying myself. Personally, I feel more engaged with this opening area compared to PoE1's opening. There is more variety, skill checks, and CYOA, and I can tolerate the combat. Furthermore, Obsidian finally found a way to make being a Watcher semi-relevant, and I hope it keeps up. So far, I have found 3 ghosts that give me information, one of which was hidden behind a CYOA (not that hard to find though). After talking to the spirits, the Watcher seems to collect them for Berath. Provided this is a recurring mechanic, I hope there is a benefit to collecting all the spirits in the game.

My main gripe thus far is the narrator that chimes in during the dialogue for descriptions, because certain lines are just grating. Even when the lines are not grating, I do not find that the narrator conveys much gravity to any line or feature. It comes off as monotone, and I find myself mocking the narrator.

Also, at times the PC's dialogue seem split between annoyed, succinct, or goofy. The goofy lines are somewhat jarring if only because I cannot remember a single line in PoE that had a slight hint of humor from the PC. Therefore, it seems Obsidian took a very different approach to the PC's lines.

Story/Eothas Spoiler

Spoiler

So the farther away Eothas is, the weaker you become? I guess that is one reason for the PC to care about Eothas and not just walk the other direction. Still, I hope it becomes relevant to gameplay and not just a casually thrown in reason to hunt Eothas.

Edit: I would love to be able to skip right to the initial island in a subsequent playthrough. The opening sequence was neat the first time, but I could see it being annoying to walk through a second or third time.

I also like the illusion of "open world" they give you within the confines of an island, when you can move around the world map and choose the order in which you visit areas. As I imagined, moving on the world map is token stuff, because you can't have random encounters, a la Fallout, but it's still a nice touch, especially on a first run when you don't know the shape and size of islands yet. I guess once you can free roam the archipelago the "open world" feel will be more justified, and it will start getting significant which beach you used to land on a given island.

I expected the VO will be shitty, so far it hasn't been D:OS2 levels of cringe, which is good. However, I didn't expect to meet significant issues with the quality of the sound. The male voice set I am using sounds uneven in its sound volume. Some lines are quieter than others, and some sound as if they are spoken with a different voice. Very weird. Also surprisingly, they are not reusing any voice sets, although they are reusing PoE music tracks. Why not reuse voice sets? The aggressive/badass voice set was perfect for my Bleak Walker in PoE, even if I would have liked to get rid of the generic grunts for selection/command sounds.

Voicesets. What the hell happened there? Maybe they'd have to pay an old VO extra money to reuse them, but the first game had some good ones.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Voicesets. What the hell happened there? Maybe they'd have to pay an old VO extra money to reuse them, but the first game had some good ones.

You get the same problem with the "Sinister" voice set too? So it's not me imagining, or my speakers being at fault?

 

[Pizzashoes]

Yes. Just cycling through the different ones in the menu, you can tell some have varying levels of loudness.

 

[Theldaran]

So... is it shit?

 

[2house2fly]

Also is it really SJW-infested?

There're gay NPCs around. Some talk openly about sexual stuff. Beware.

Gay NPCs?!

 

[veevoir]

I will award some points for approach options on the "kill Benweth the dick from intro" quest. I managed to go full agent 47 on him, not a single combat encounter.

 

[Thonius]

I find the southern drawl really charming. Might be because I'm a southern boy myself, not from US though.

I liked Xoti's accent too.

South/Texan accents are best in whole world! I'm not being ironical here.
Also I kinda expected portraits to be auto corrected/applied filter for that cartoon style dialog window... well some Photoshop can easily fix that...

 

[AwesomeButton]

I find the southern drawl really charming. Might be because I'm a southern boy myself, not from US though.

I liked Xoti's accent too.

South/Texan accents are best in whole world! I'm not being ironical here.
Also I kinda expected portraits to be auto corrected/applied filter for that cartoon style dialog window... well some Photoshop can easily fix that...

Spoiler

BTW, I don't like the watercolor portraits as an idea. Don't plan to make watercolor versions of mine at all.

 

[Lacrymas]

You get the same problem with the "Sinister" voice set too? So it's not me imagining, or my speakers being at fault?

I think Sinister is even a different voice set than PoE1, I couldn't find the one I used in PoE1, so my character sounds different now.

A bug I noticed - I can't use my character in CYOA sections because it says she is too far away. I'm going to restart on PotD anyway, Veteran/Hard is a joke. I also don't know where my kidnapped liberated orlan baby is and don't know how to check if that bug is affecting me. Either way, I'll wait for patches, I have my Master's paper to finish.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

One thing I don't get about the reviews is how most of them call Deadfire an improvement and then give it the same or lower rating.
IGN – 8.5 vs 9.0
Ragequit – 92 vs 99
Gamestar – 92 both
PC Gamer – 88 vs 92
Gamespot – 80 vs 80


Is it the lack of novelty? The crowded market? The lighter-themed main story?

I think the first game had a 5-10 point bump from most reviewers because it was crowdfunded. Crowdfunding was this new hip thing, and no one wanted to bury it alive before it even took off.

But now it's obvious that crowdfunding is here to stay. So while the sequel is a huge improvement, this time the score is without the Kickstarter bonus.

 

[Sigourn]

Call me autistic if you will, but:

book of Aedyran poetry by the artist Scilba

How do our characters know that? Can they see the book's cover? And if they can: does it really matter to me, as a player? Also

Looking more closely

So the first thing we noticed was

1. What the book was about, and
2. Who wrote the book.

As opposed to the dude picking a padlock with his free hand? What?

EDIT:

This reminds me of something my Screenplay professor told us the other day: don't focus on meaningless details; the only details worth describing are those that are actually important (e.g. the eagle foreshadows that character's affiliation with a certain faction or group of people). I understand there's a difference between a book and a film, but IMO videogames are much closer to movies than books are. And Obsidian insists on focusing on the meaningless details that provide NO INFORMATION WHATSOEVER on the characters, as opposed to the ones that actually do.

It is one thing to describe Cass' breath smells like alcohol (in an isometric Fallout game). It is another thing to descibre what material her shoes are made of. Granted, I have no idea if this lanky dude's love for poetry comes into play at any moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't.

 

[Prime Junta]

I think the first game had a 5-10 point bump from most reviewers because it was crowdfunded. Crowdfunding was this new hip thing, and no one wanted to bury it alive before it even took off.

But now it's obvious that crowdfunding is here to stay. So while the sequel is a huge improvement, this time the score is without the Kickstarter bonus.

Also the market has changed. P2 is in a world that includes DOS 1 and 2 as well as P1. P1 appeared in a world that didn't have anything in this style and above a shoestring budget.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I think Sinister is even a different voice set than PoE1, I couldn't find the one I used in PoE1, so my character sounds different now.

It definitely is. I thought all are new in Deadfire.

 

[Theldaran]

I mean, don't you know about Scilba??

 

[AwesomeButton]

It was easy to rip sounds form other games and make voice sets even though you couldn't post them on nexus because of copyright, but now that they are compressing the sound files, I don't know if we'll ever get custom voice sets

All because of the fucking full VO...