Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[FreeKaner]

I am super upset that Pallegina was made an uggo and doesn't look like herself in PoE1.

 

[Parabalus]

As far as I know, yeah, nobody in Obs can play the game on PotD, and so that difficulty goes virtually untested, that was true in PoE as well. And even then, PotD in PoE wasn't even as difficult as SCS, which is the most lenient of BG's difficulty mods.

It's hardly fair to compare the base game to mods though.

SCS is more challenging which means more fun than PoTD (So do what SCS did..) . Also I strongly agree with Lacrymas's earlier point.
Josh can literally do whatever the fuck he wants in POTD without risk hurting the normie's feelings.

Just sawyer-balance the game around Hard, Nerf down for normies and throw the farm at us in POTD.
Quit giving us blue balls.

I'm not sure I agree with the bolded statement.

How do you measure challenge - Number of reloads? Time spent on boss? Sense of satisfaction after winning? % of playerbase who did it?

Bg2, with SCS especially, has a much bigger emphasis on figuring out the puzzle, e.g. SCS Kangaxx is terrifying with something like -15 AC, 90% physical DR, 90% MR, 3 contingencies, immune to +3 or lower, spams save or die spells and mage HLAs.

Then you remember you have Daystar which pierces DR, its sunray can oneshot him, or that you use protection from Undead scrolls and laugh while he walks like a headless monkey. That's mostly how all hard encounters go.

Is it more satisfying than PoE? Likely, looking at the general community sentiment. Is is genuinely harder though? I'm not certain.

I am super upset that Pallegina was made an uggo and doesn't look like herself in PoE1.

They should have used the same angle as the PoE1 portrait and avoided the issue.

Isn't this game taking place 2 years after the end of PoE? How does that make Eder, or anyone else, "older"? Pallegina was 25 in PoE1, yet she looks aged decades in her new portrait as well as looking like a completely different person.

IIRC it was "around" 5 years.

I can accept it being the same person since the PoE angle was very non-revealing, but def. not what I was expecting, with the PoE1 ingame model in mind.

 

[Lacrymas]

I obviously also agree that SCS is more challenging than PotD, potential for cheese notwithstanding. Challenge is a quantifiable metric, but in the sense of "I'll know it when I see it". Empirically, I'd guess it will depend on number of reloads with no cheese used on a first playthrough and that definitely goes to SCS. I reloaded more times on Sarevok alone than the entirety of my PotD run. It's also worth noting that SCS mostly plays fair, in that it's pure AI and encounter design without needless stat bloat, while PotD is entirely stat bloat.

 

[CptMace]

The only option those SJW's in power at Obsidian saw for making a male character belonging to a race of huge, muscular, warlike humanoids was to turn him into a cheerful artist (and treehugger). Can't glorify the male penchant for violence, can't risk a shitstorm by purple haired snowflakes ranting about the "clichéd" huge male fighting character.

Get help.

I need to get off this gay Earth.

Indeed.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

My God those portraits are hideous.

 

[Sacred82]

The only option those SJW's in power at Obsidian saw for making a male character belonging to a race of huge, muscular, warlike humanoids was to turn him into a cheerful artist (and treehugger). Can't glorify the male penchant for violence, can't risk a shitstorm by purple haired snowflakes ranting about the "clichéd" huge male fighting character.

Get help.

I need to get off this gay Earth.

Indeed.

In Pillars, the only other Aumaua was a female Barbarian. In Deadfire, the only other Aumaua is a female Ranger. Both are martial classes. Get your head out of your ass, the writing is on the wall.

Wether you take offense to such retardation is up to you. Retards probably don't mind other people's retardation as long as it doesn't get in the way of their limited interests.

 

[Maculo]

Someone with a humanities major showed up in the Obsidian Portrait thread.

The 'improved' potrait is very wrongheaded. It neuters and flattens the character.

Pallegina is all about dualism: Duty Vs Heart, Lace Vs Steel, Passion Vs Stoicism, Human Vs Godlike. You know she is a person deeply and dramatically divided by an inner conflict because of the enormous blood-red slash that is sundering her unyielding breastplate in two. She wears her heart on her breast. It's the most prominent block of uniform color and demands your attention, saying 'hey this person has a streak of heart literally a mile wide. It divides them'. Maybe that's too subtle? This simple visual representation of a person conflicted is suppressed in the new portrait.

In the original her feathes are clearly demarcated from her natural hair - her humanity is distinct from her godlike divinity. Again, an uneasy truce, tense coexistence. In the new portrait, this is diluted. The feathers just bleed into the hair. Pallegina the human is at peace with Pallegina the Godlike. Boring.

Because the tone of her skin has been lightened the feminine lace of her shirt is harder to see, taking the energy out of its struggle to breathe free of the suffocating steel encasing it. She's no longer struggling to express a more caring, gentle side of herself.

Everything about the original portrait illustrates a tremndous pent up energy resulting from these layers of inner and outer conflicts. The half snarl she's wearing reinforces the impression that this character is sublect to raw emotional turbulence. She is the center of immovable objects meeting irresistible forces. That try as she might, she is unable to suppress her rich inner life because it bursts out of her collar, in brilliant feathers out of her eyes, in a huge slash across her body.

The new portrait sucessfully supresses Pallegina. Its as if the artist thought 'how can I take this powerfully conflicted person and pacify them?'. It sucks.

 

[Sacred82]

Someone with a humanities major

plz no prejudice

this bullshit could have been written up by any emo teen.

 

[FreeKaner]

Why did they think eyes looking flat and directly ahead like a driving license photo was a good idea?

 

[Sacred82]

The only option those SJW's in power at Obsidian saw for making a male character belonging to a race of huge, muscular, warlike humanoids was to turn him into a cheerful artist (and treehugger). Can't glorify the male penchant for violence, can't risk a shitstorm by purple haired snowflakes ranting about the "clichéd" huge male fighting character.

Get help.

I need to get off this gay Earth.

Indeed.

In Pillars, the only other Aumaua was a female Barbarian. In Deadfire, the only other Aumaua is a female Ranger. Both are martial classes. Get your head out of your ass, the writing is on the wall.

Wether you take offense to such retardation is up to you. Retards probably don't mind other people's retardation as long as it doesn't get in the way of their limited interests.

Fuck, I have to meta myself. There's a chance the man-hater faction at Obsidian would have liked to turn Aumaua culture into a matriarchy, with men relegated to the arts (Chanter) and gardening (Druid).

Which would kind of make Josh the unlikely defender of a high-T culture he himself dreamed up.


Never discount a man who keeps a mace in his home.

 

[Maculo]

Someone with a humanities major

plz no prejudice

this bullshit could have been written up by any emo teen.

Which is the same thing as a humanities major. If an American humanities major says they were taught critical thinking, then you know they have no critical thinking skills.

 

[Sizzle]

In Pillars, the only other Aumaua was a female Barbarian. In Deadfire, the only other Aumaua is a female Ranger. Both are martial classes. Get your head out of your ass, the writing is on the wall.

And Kana Rua, a male chanter.

In PoE2 there's also Tekehu, a male chanter/druid.

 

[Sacred82]

ummm yeah that's what I meant by "other"

 

[Sizzle]

Reading comprehension fail on my part, still a bit drowsy :D

 

[Lacrymas]

While the "humanities major" person who wrote that was overreaching and reading too much into her design, I agree that the revised portraits do neuter and subjugate them. The discussion around the portraits and how beautiful the women are is evidence enough that the act of beautification strips them of their personhood and places the emphasis on the value on their outward appearance. Both Ydwin and Pallegina have less defiant stares, Ydwin's head is smaller and her eyes are looking up, a very unsubtle depiction of submission.

 

[CptMace]

In Pillars, the only other Aumaua was a female Barbarian. In Deadfire, the only other Aumaua is a female Ranger. Both are martial classes. Get your head out of your ass, the writing is on the wall.

Wether you take offense to such retardation is up to you. Retards probably don't mind other people's retardation as long as it doesn't get in the way of their limited interests.

Why would I take offense ? You're the one who's obsessed and needs help. If you want actual examples of social awareness in poe, there's sagani and her matriarcal tribe, who comments on how her husband is such a good cook, or Pallegina's reflexions on how she's a brother because she's assexual or some shit. But they're way more discreet than the transsexual in SOD or the one in Mass Effect.
And here you are, getting on your high horses because there's a bard who's 2m tall.
Talk about retardation, you spastic.

 

[Sacred82]

actually the womyn look much more alert and perceptive in the new pictures. Before they looked like urban girls on ritalin.

Not that any of this has any claim to objectivity but still

 

[Sacred82]

In Pillars, the only other Aumaua was a female Barbarian. In Deadfire, the only other Aumaua is a female Ranger. Both are martial classes. Get your head out of your ass, the writing is on the wall.

Wether you take offense to such retardation is up to you. Retards probably don't mind other people's retardation as long as it doesn't get in the way of their limited interests.

Why would I take offense ? You're the one who's obsessed and needs help. If you want actual examples of social awareness in poe, there's sagani and her matriarcal tribe, who comments on how her husband is such a good cook, or Pallegina's reflexions on how she's a brother because she's assexual or some shit. But they're way more discreet than the transsexual in SOD or the one in Mass Effect.
And here you are, getting on your high horses because there's a bard who's 2m tall.
Talk about retardation, you sbastic.

wtf high horse, like I said it's your business if you don't mind having to pick female characters for damage dealers and men for support in every game.

Personally I find this kind of uniformity uninspired, ham-fisted and outright stupid. Which is ofc in other contexts a classic feminist tactic - identify what you believe to be problematic male behaviour, and reverse engineer it at every opportunity.

Citing Sagani in this context only reinforces my point that these lines of thought influenced Pillars, not sure you get that.

 

[Brancaleone]

Eder looks like Neil Patrick Harris on the "revised" one

If you say so.

I raise you a PoE1 pretty-boy Eder with:

 

[CptMace]

2) The only option those SJW's in power at Obsidian saw for making a male character belonging to a race of huge, muscular, warlike humanoids was to turn him into a cheerful artist (and treehugger). Can't glorify the male penchant for violence, can't risk a shitstorm by purple haired snowflakes ranting about the "clichéd" huge male fighting character.

Just in case you forgot what I was reacting to. Seems to be the case.

Society
The lore college of Rauatai is central to its culture, its chanters responsible for maintaining history and traditions alive. All students answer to the Keeper of the college, who is responsible for weaving their stories into the chant that serves as a record of Rauatai knowledge and lore. Furthermore, it is one of the greatest libraries in existence... According to its chanters at least.

Maybe that could explain why they put aumaua chanters in their game. But I don't know, now that you made me woke, I think it actually has to do with a feminist agenda.

 

[Pequod]

 

[Pequod]

How about it, Codex? Puceau?

 

[Sacred82]

Society
The lore college of Rauatai is central to its culture, its chanters responsible for maintaining history and traditions alive. All students answer to the Keeper of the college, who is responsible for weaving their stories into the chant that serves as a record of Rauatai knowledge and lore. Furthermore, it is one of the greatest libraries in existence... According to its chanters at least.

Maybe that could explain why they put aumaua chanters in their game. But I don't know, now that you made me woke, I think it actually has to do with a feminist agenda.

give some fucking sources man, I had to cp that shit into google.

That lore entry doesn't give any date or source, so I have no idea when this information was even made available. Could be out of Pillars 1 for all I know, could be Deadfire related information, could have been released at any time. It doesn't really matter, because a good time before the first game shipped they had already decided on including the male Aumaua Chanter. The female Barbarian came with WM IIRC, so if the process I was theorizing about really took place it could have happend during development or after release.

At any rate, that snippet doesn't say anything about lore keeper being strictly a male role, does it? If it's central to the culture, why do we only get male chanters? Either it's an honorary but ultimately powerless position reserved for men, or Chanters are kangz and womyn must hunt and gather and protect the tribe. Either way, you owe us some answers Obs


Could also be an ongoing discussion in the team, they have round table like meetings after all, anyone gets their say, and a loud voice could possibly drown out the gentle voice of a senior designer and project lead.

 

[CptMace]

give some fucking sources man, I had to cp that shit into google.

My bad. It's just copy pasted from what Kana Rua says in the first game.

At any rate, that snippet doesn't say anything about lore keeper being strictly a male role, does it? If it's central to the culture, why do we only get male chanters? Either it's an honorary but ultimately powerless position reserved for men, or Chanters are kangz and womyn must hunt and gather and protect the tribe. Either way, you owe us some answers Obs

Brings me back to my original point. Nobody feels like this information is lacking, besides those who are obsessed with the matter.
But since the wiki also states that chanters serve in the military, it would actually have been more questionable if all aumaua chanters were to be female, implying that males are out of the military.

 

[Sacred82]

Brings me back to my original point. Nobody feels like this information is lacking, besides those who are obsessed with the matter.
But since the wiki also states that chanters serve in the military, it would actually have been more questionable if all aumaua chanters were to be female.

I'm not obsessed with the reasoning behind it, just give me a good mix of classes and genders and keep your fucking lore to yourself for all I care.

Wut? I would guess Rangers and Barbarians also lead pretty dangerous lives, putting their precious wombs at risk. So why wouldn't they serve in organized military forces? I think the Aumaua tribes in Deadfire even have different technological/ social levels, in the more primitive ones the warriors are probably almost exclusively Barbs and Rangers.