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

AwesomeButton

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Who responds to the male mayor of Port Maje.

2nd in command behind Furrante
Both are depicted negatively, as sly, decietful, and greedy.

Who seems like a figurehead while the man in the basement actually runs things.
Who in turn is gay, and also qualifying for the abovementioned description.

That's 3 of 4 examples that are wrong.
The examples are not "wrong", as all the cited characters are indeed women. I can give more examples of this recurring theme, just decided to stop there.

I'm not "outraged" by the theme, just makes an impression with how clumsyly it's been shoehorned. Reminds me of SoD where every woman felt obliged to point out how men are worthless, and how strong and independent she is.
 

AwesomeButton

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Want another example? Here - Arkemyr's apprentice (indeed, apprentice) Fassina, and her boyfriend. The woman is resourceful but undervalued and subjected to her master's indignities and her boyfriend's absent mindedness, the boyfriend is sly, decietful, silly, vain, and greedy. No redeeming qualities.

It's just funny to watch them trying so hard.
 

2house2fly

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It's actually pretty amusing because there is nothing in the writing that would give out that they are women, if we didn't learn it from the VO and from the pronouns used in the descriptive text. Even the watercolor portraits are not very helpful.

Such an effort of puffing and pushing, to fill the quota you know, to have more womyn represented, and the end result is merely a fart.
The whole point of representation is that it should look like business as usual. Same as New Vegas. I prefer this way of doing it to some Girl Power shit
 

AwesomeButton

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What it looks to me is forced, the opposite of "business as usual". But I'm willing to suffer through it with a smile, because it's done pretty clumsyly.

I'm becoming biased towards Josh and every time I encounter an interesting character or conversation, I attribute it to him having worked on it. I should make a check after I finish the game and see where I was right and where not.
 

Sizzle

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Want another example? Here - Arkemyr's apprentice (indeed, apprentice) Fassina, and her boyfriend. The woman is resourceful but undervalued and subjected to her master's indignities and her boyfriend's absent mindedness, the boyfriend is sly, decietful, silly, vain, and greedy. No redeeming qualities.

It's just funny to watch them trying so hard.

The girl also managed to be tricked and bedded by a guy that's sly, deceitful, silly, vain, and greedy, soooooooo - I wouldn't call her an all-around perfect character.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Who responds to the male mayor of Port Maje.

2nd in command behind Furrante
Both are depicted negatively, as sly, decietful, and greedy.

Who seems like a figurehead while the man in the basement actually runs things.
Who in turn is gay, and also qualifying for the abovementioned description.

That's 3 of 4 examples that are wrong.
The examples are not "wrong", as all the cited characters are indeed women. I can give more examples of this recurring theme, just decided to stop there.

Your argument was that nearly every position of power was occupied by a women. That's simply false and you were wrong. Which is why you abandoned that angle entirely and you're switching your narrative into men are written in such and such and such way, and women in such and such. That's a different conversation.
 

Parabalus

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I'm not "outraged" by the theme, just makes an impression with how clumsyly it's been shoehorned. Reminds me of SoD where every woman felt obliged to point out how men are worthless, and how strong and independent she is.

I think you got the wrong impression of them, honestly the women in Deadfire are so bad that the SJWs could have a field day attacking the game.

Want another example? Here - Arkemyr's apprentice (indeed, apprentice) Fassina, and her boyfriend. The woman is resourceful but undervalued and subjected to her master's indignities and her boyfriend's absent mindedness, the boyfriend is sly, decietful, silly, vain, and greedy. No redeeming qualities.

It's just funny to watch them trying so hard.

Only vain is strictly negative out of those, even that's debatable.
 

AwesomeButton

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The girl also managed to be tricked and bedded by a guy that's sly, deceitful, silly, vain, and greedy, soooooooo - I wouldn't call her an all-around perfect character.

Women love bad boys, the shy successful nerd girls the most. Dumpsterfire confirmed cuckold fantasy for nice guys.
Yes, good girls, especially academic types of little experience in the real world tend to fall for ne'er-do-wells.
 

AwesomeButton

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Your argument was that nearly every position of power was occupied by a women. That's simply false and you were wrong. Which is why you abandoned that angle entirely and you're switching your narrative into men are written in such and such and such way, and women in such and such. That's a different conversation.
I don't have a "narrative", you loon, or a deep strategy to convince the world of something. I was just remarking on a tendency in the writing which I have noticed as I've been playing the game. You are free to disagree that it exists.

The one who changed the subject to how men are represented, was you.
 
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2house2fly

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Useless talk. Stop talking about this boys vs. girls shit right now.
I agree it's not really worthy of discussion. Just one more aspect of how writing has declined at Obsidian...
New Vegas did the same thing. Trudy, Ranger Ghost, Jeannie May, Colonel Moore, even Tabitha at Black Mountain. You said yourself the writing doesn't make it especially relevant that they're women, so I'm not seeing how it comes across as forced or shoehorned
 
Vatnik
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Whamen everywhere, even in heavy armour and weapons, seems to have been a thing in fantasy for a couple decades, like faggy dual-wielding. It's not something I'd blame Obsidian for specifically although it's sad they just go along with it.

These hipster writers really struggle to write anything that's far beyond their cosmopolitan bubble. That's how someone gave Sagani in PoE1 a line about reading detective novels from one of the civilised nations, I forget which. Nice fucking portrayal of an inuit-style hunter-gather as literate, in a foreign language no less, you APE. It's also how we get a supposedly ''early colonial archipelago'' setting with not a single slave plantation: where do the slaves of Crookspur even go once sold? In PoE2 the biggest decider for how much the party likes you is whether you tell whimsical little jokes, are nice to fluffy animals, etc. At least Maia and Pallegina are patriotic, and Xoti zealous, but none of them are hostile to other faiths or religions like real people were and are. Real history was so much edgier than this, PoE2 feels like a fluffy millenial take. We were lucky to get a single actual religious chauvinist character in PoE1 thanks to MCA, and GM's backstory was nicely edgy too, oh and we had Devil of Caroc. PoE2 definitely declined on companions and general quality of writing.

Also does Sawyer have a past of making these limp main storylines? It would have been easy to jiggle it around a little in order to give the player something to actually do to feel important. For example, have the Gods reanimate their old skeletons for a real fight with Eothas, and you could assist or oppose that. Did they write a shite storyline with an invincible protagonist (Eothas) because they ran out of money and time after focusing on the real issue of giving every fish salesman full VA?

The more I think about this game the more it irritates me. Story was bad, companions mediocre, setting mediocre, combat is good (once patched) but automatically lame because it's human vs AI (if I want fantasy combat I play vs other humans in Dogshit of the Autism 2), the exploration aspect is mediocre and it really needs those DLCs to turn out well to become good, leaving the lighting as the only thing that's actually deserving of praise.
 
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2house2fly

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Sawyer tends more towards the non-linear. See New Vegas's main quest, which largely boils down to "do side quests". I would guess that the main quest is the way it is because they wanted it to be short and propulsive with set pieces and scripted events, so that more people might actually get to the end
 
Vatnik
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muh reality
The problem is it's too influenced by pampered, tolerant 21st century reality, not so much that it doesn't reflect real history (my bad for basically saying it should). Reflecting real history more would however be a good first step for the writers to detach themselves from modern assumptions.
Sawyer tends more towards the non-linear. See New Vegas's main quest, which largely boils down to "do side quests". I would guess that the main quest is the way it is because they wanted it to be short and propulsive with set pieces and scripted events, so that more people might actually get to the end
I haven't played new Vegas because 3D confuses me, but I'm guessing there's a lot more involvement on the part of the character to New Vegas' quests. By involvement I mean killing people, fixing electronics (compared to the derisory, simple 'pull the lever' in Ukaizo), delivering secret missives, sabotage or whatever else. In the Eothas questline there's nothing much for you or the Gods to do (that actually changes things), it really does feel like you're a Watcher, almost any other RPG has a much more viscerally satisfying main quest. The volcano destroys no settlements, there's no settlements destroyed by the tsunami, the Gods don't consume the souls of the godlikes... it's all so meh.

If they made it this way for the reason you say, that's quite unfortunate.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Yeah, but the difference is, in New Vegas despite the relaxed structure, the main quest and the side quests eventually combine into a bigger story arc, whereas here the Eothas plot and faction conflict are barely even connected.
 

2house2fly

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I think Eothas breaking the Wheel works as some Inevitable Event whose effects are influenced by the way you deal with the factions and side quests, the problem is that the factions aren't connected to the main plot, so their involvement with the Inevitable Event feels tacked on rather than a core aspect of the game. I haven't finished yet so I don't know the details of the final quests, but from what I gather it doesn't really improve from the earlier main quests
 
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Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
There isn't anything to the main quest at all, they are a linear "go here, go there" and done. It's the shortest main quest in an RPG ever.
 

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