Decided to replay this to investigate the story quality on my own. I don't really consider myself a critic, but my first outing with this game left a bad taste in my mouth.
Mode: PoTD/Expert
Race: Wood Elf
Class: Rogue
From: Deadfire Archipeligo +1 Dex
Background: Raider +1 Stealth/Athletics
Stats:
Mig 14
Con 12
Dex 16
Per 14
Int 10
Res 12
I'm not very far in yet, just past character creation honestly, but I already have a few things to say.
First thing is first. The game looks gorgeous for what it is. The character models are a bit rough, but this saves from having overly derpy character animations etc I guess. The backgrounds and art are all quite nice.
The character creator is as full of fluff as I remember. I took the time to read some of the characterizing details of the races and a few of the little wiki pop-ups. They really made an effort to describe the various places and races. Already noticed some allegory: Aedyr = Rome, Dyrwood = Celtic/Barbarian Europe, Deadfire = Mediterranean region. I could be off on these of course.
It's a bit off-putting to receive stat points when choosing your region of origin. But I guess if you're min-maxing, you don't really care what stereotype you have to choose. I still welcome the extra stat-points, but saying that every race from a particular region is likely to have +1 whatever is a bit shallow when compared to all the detail they've put into characterizing these places.
After that, you're dumped into the prologue where you're venturing to Dyrwood, where they happen to be handing out free land to immigrants (which sounds like a terrible policy, imo)
Anyway, the caravan has to stop because the MC is starting to look ill, which may be in relation to a bug bite. You're pared up with an npc and sent to fetch barries and water.
The berries, if eaten, may cause stomach discomfort up to and including diarrhea. But if you brew them into a tea, they will "
clean calm
out your innards".
I'm sorry, am I missing something? Aren't those the same thing? The caravan master also mentions if you go 24 hours w/o water you will die.
I mention this because a common meme is that the game starts with you HAVING diarrhea, but this isn't accurate,
the caravan stops so that you can go and ACQUIRE diarrhea. Also, trying to get diarrhea when you've been told you may die of dehydration within 24 hours- this is a perfect example of a piece of writing working against itself. Diarrhea can be extremely dehydrating. Who starts a story like this?! Wtf Obsidian?
More Lore: Apparently Dyrwood recently won it's independence from Aedyr. You can learn this from chatting up the merchant who is from Aedyr.
According to the character creation, Aedyr is ruled by 7 "ducs" while Dyrwood is apparently ruled by 1 "duc" and a council of "erls". My best guess is this was a cultural or economic revolution, because both of those systems look the same on the outside to me.
EDIT: for accuracy, thanks
2house2fly (all edits have been crossed out, I'm not one to hide my ignorance
)
Further EDIT: Also fixed stats, Per was off by one. This is what you get for not taking thorough notes.