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

[Kyl Von Kull]

Over the years I've grown p. perceptive to fake choices and games never following up on shit you do.

Throughout the entire game I haven't seen anything (major) that I could recognise as the game reacting to any choice, other than some throwaway dialogue line like "o u did that well that's interesting, now for your next quest..." or "waaah how dare u, here's a generic throwaway combat encounter". The fact that you can do all the quests for everyone (except the final ones which are mutually exclusive, but that's hardly C&C either) only confirms me in my suspicions. And then there was that one goy somewhere earlier in the thread who said you can just genocide all the towns and all the faction leaders and it doesn't matter for shit lol.

Ok, let's see. I'll bring up concrete examples, and it will probably turn out we have different expectations for what is C&C. Then I'll ask you to give me examples of good C&C from other games, and it will turn out you have double standards, right?

You can outright betray the major factions, do nothing to hide it, then after chastising you, they will keep giving you work. This leaves a powerful impression that your choices don’t carry the weight they should.

Plus, some of the real in-game consequences are sort of buried in that you need to return to some island that, at least so far, I’ve had no actual reason to return to aside from curiosity.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You can outright betray the major factions, do nothing to hide it, then after chastising you, they will keep giving you work. This leaves a powerful impression that your choices don’t carry the weight they should.

Plus, some of the real in-game consequences are sort of buried in that you need to return to some island that, at least so far, I’ve had no actual reason to return to aside from curiosity.

Ah yes, the lame "no content should be locked out" philosophy.

 

[Jinn]

It really is too bad about the lack of consequences with the factions. I do hope to one day play with a mod where this is remedied. At least from what I hear, if you go too far with the quests of one faction, you will get locked out of at least some quests with others. That still holds true, right?

On another note, I've gotten back to my playthrough now that the game has been patched up and have already had a couple excellently challenging encounters. Really pleased with the improved difficulty.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It doesn't have to be just this kind of interdependence - if you do this quest, you'll be locked out of these other quests. You could make very complex webs of consequences where doing one quest opens different other quests for other factions.

But why would they hire you if you are working for their competition - they might still be willing to hire you because they don't know who exactly did that previous thing that messed up their plans, etc.

With four factions and a big open map though, I guess this was unfeasible to the Deadfire team. It's only possible for "a small team that's always on the same page about what they are doing" like Tim Cain was describing it. I don't know other games that have done something like that except AoD and Fallout I guess?

 

[Darth Roxor]

At least from what I hear, if you go too far with the quests of one faction, you will get locked out of at least some quests with others. That still holds true, right?

Only for doing their final (strictly endgame) quests. This locks you out of the other facshuns.

 

[Reinhardt]

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/94

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Seems some people don't happy with their personal life, it's sad to look when they trying to mod a game with shitload useless romances for even more useless romances.

 

[Herald of Durance]

The final choice was really bizarre.

Spoiler

After two entire games worth of demonstrating how the gods are cruel, arbitrary, callous, and often outright disdainful of humanity, up to and including the revelation that all godlike are just literal human batteries for them in case they need an extra power boost and forcing you with a geas and under threat of death to be their errand boy, the game swings around at the end and treats the idea of them being revealed as frauds as if it's something morally ambiguous. Why would you not want to get rid of these people? There really are no stakes in stopping Eothas because you have absolutely no reason to want to stop Eothas in the first place. He's completely in the right.

But

Spoiler

who says you even want stop Eothas?
You don't have a choice but to follow him, otherwise Berath turns you into a squirrel. You can even tell the gods point blank they should all be exterminated several times when you converse with them.

You're also forgetting that supposedly you have to follow Eothas because he has a piece of your soul. Not that it shows or matters in any way.

 

[Sizzle]

You "going insane" in PoE1 also didn't hamper you in the slightest, so at least they're staying true to their roots :D

 

[Parabalus]

The final choice was really bizarre.

Spoiler

After two entire games worth of demonstrating how the gods are cruel, arbitrary, callous, and often outright disdainful of humanity, up to and including the revelation that all godlike are just literal human batteries for them in case they need an extra power boost and forcing you with a geas and under threat of death to be their errand boy, the game swings around at the end and treats the idea of them being revealed as frauds as if it's something morally ambiguous. Why would you not want to get rid of these people? There really are no stakes in stopping Eothas because you have absolutely no reason to want to stop Eothas in the first place. He's completely in the right.

But

Spoiler

who says you even want stop Eothas?
You don't have a choice but to follow him, otherwise Berath turns you into a squirrel. You can even tell the gods point blank they should all be exterminated several times when you converse with them.

You're also forgetting that supposedly you have to follow Eothas because he has a piece of your soul. Not that it shows or matters in any way.

IIRC this time you aren't dying like in PoE1, the stolen soul just makes you the best detective for the job.

 

[Lacrymas]

How exactly do you get back your powers from PoE1? Is it following the main quest or is it some side quest?

 

[Parabalus]

How exactly do you get back your powers from PoE1? Is it following the main quest or is it some side quest?

MQ and it "makes sense".

 

[Herald of Durance]

The dialogue surrounding it was pretty horrible. One of the options was something like this:

"Hi, I'm your soul, want me back?"
"Nah, I'm a different person now."
"Ok, bye."

I think it gives you some useless watcher power or something. Never used it.

 

[FreeKaner]

Game is too easy. Rather, it's too in-depth and has a lot of complexities that player can utilise to its full potential while AI doesn't do anything beyond occasionally removing afflictions with inspirations.

 

[fantadomat]

AwesomeButton,how about this for C&C? I killed everyone in the capital,not a named npc left,killed and all the assholes in the colonies. In the end battle,where you get attacked by group before talking with eothas,there are people that i already killed. Also the slider shows that half of my victims are alive.

 

[aweigh]

that's pretty lulzy, fantadomat . Btw, are there any npc's like lady webb in poe1 that cause game over if killed?

 

[AwesomeButton]

AwesomeButton,how about this for C&C? I killed everyone in the capital,not a named npc left,killed and all the assholes in the colonies. In the end battle,where you get attacked by group before talking with eothas,there are people that i already killed. Also the slider shows that half of my victims are alive.

You kill everyone and nothing happens. Shit C&C, you're totally right.

 

[Darth Roxor]

You kill everyone and nothing happens. Shit C&C, you're totally right.

In the end battle there are people that i already killed.

 

[Shadenuat]

My favorite is if you try to kill all the pirate captains and the last one says you killed his brother not him. Is there really some eyepatch hint there? Or maybe he has 2 chairs/seats in consulago? Genuinely curious.

 

[fantadomat]

that's pretty lulzy, fantadomat . Btw, are there any npc's like lady webb in poe1 that cause game over if killed?

There is a speed run that show how shallow the main story is. He finished it in like 20 minutes on hardest by just running forward and pressing 1 in dialogues.

 

[Sizzle]

If there's one faction you should be able to completely wipe out - it's the Principi.

The other ones posses more sheer manpower and resources, so getting rid of them all is hard, but the Principi could conceivably be eliminated with relative ease.

 

[Lacrymas]

It depends on what the Principi actually is, I didn't get the impression they are an organization, more loosely connected individuals that share the same ideology, so wiping them out seems as possible as wiping out Anonymous (remember when they were relevant?). Another retarded thing I noticed is when talking to Mad Morena you can punch her in the face for no reason whatsoever. I did it to see what would happen, she laughed it off and gave me positive rep with them. Kind of random. I know you can say you did it because you don't like being threatened, which is fine, but you can't punch anyone else like this for the same reason, soooooo. The everpresent narrative overlord is pretty insistent in this game.

The rough starting period is wearing off now and I have to purposefully seek out higher level enemies for the same challenge, I cleared out the entire Old City at level 6/7, I stopped yesterday after wiping on the end boss, I doubt I'll be able to do it now due to the excessive level difference and high defenses, so I'll come back later. While the general questline in there is interesting from an archaeological and exploratory perspective, there isn't anything more to it than that, which is a shame. I don't know why dungeon quests are so rare these days. It has a better than average aesthetic, though, which is incline.

 

[Sizzle]

Not to spoil too much, but there's a spot in the game where all of their leadership converges to one location, so it would be possible to do so.

 

[Lacrymas]

What's stopping others from usurping the leadership position after that?

Also, the sabre and sword overflow is ridiculous, I got 2 unique swords, I can reforge the Whispers of Yenwood and Blade of Endless Paths for another 2, and 4 (!) unique sabres, but literally no other unique weapons.

 

[Sizzle]

Killing everyone off and raiding their entire base of operations is a pretty solid detriment to them ever again wielding any sort of actual influence and power, no?

It wouldn't destroy piracy - plenty of them would be left on the seas - but it probably would destroy them as an organization and credible threat.