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

[Hyperion]

The Ogre floor, Beetle floor, and Wyvern floor are breddy gud if you go as soon as the game allows. Difficulty drops after the Wyvern, unfortunately. Then the Vampire floor is kinda rough if you don't have an Alpha Strike setup.

 

[fantadomat]

Od Nua is one of the shittiest dungeons I ever had the misfortune of embarking upon. You literally battle trash mob after trash mob of copy-pasted kobolds called "Xaurips" until you realize how shit it really is, there is no encounter design or anything remarkable about it.

There is no level design let alone a battle one. Most of the levels are retarded random shit and the whole dungeon lacks any theme. You have ogre sewers,vampire labs,magical labs,drake level,spider caves and more random shit. It is really bad how it lacks any theme to it.

 

[2house2fly]

All of these interviews are the same, if I were Katrina I'd be dead bored by them at this point.

i guess she was, because now she's leaving the company

I see a lot of people saying this and I don't understand why. Unless you are skipping all the dialogue that is.

You have a very solid reason to be looking for Thaos, he's the person that triggered your awakening. Watchers with awakened souls eventually stop being able to tell the difference between real life and memories from their past life, ending up insane. Resolving whatever unfinished business your past self has with him is your only hope to prevent this, not to mention that he's a member of the Leaden Key and if anyone knows how to cure your condition, it's them. All of this is explained and witnessed when you meet Maerwald, which happens relatively early and this is when you start looking for Thaos. You are on a quest to save your own sanity. The hollowborn, god shenanigans etc. are just background stuff you don't really have to care about if you don't want to.

There's a lot of bad things that can be said about the story in PoE and the whole game in general, but lack of motivation for the main character to pursue the main questline is not one of them.

as I always say when people criticise a bizarre made-up version of POE's story based on their inability to understand and retain basic plot points: the writing not being interesting enough to make you pay attention is a valid criticism in itself.

As i said most of the game,until you met the crazed watcher in the stronghold,you had motivation,even if i knew how it will end. After that it is clear that no matter what you do,it will end badly for you. Everyone is saying the same thing,even the useless gods that you could have blackmailed in to fixing your soul for butchering that random goy that you know from 1000 years. And how do the insanity arc ends? With a retarded question "If you had to make same choice,would you do it again?",after you answer it you have put the past to rest. If only the watcher from the stronghold could have said "Don't care about your melodrama from the past faggots,leave me be!" and everything would have been ok. Fuck off obsidian! The story was retarded no two minds on it. As for the bad guy,you have absolutely no reason to interfere with his things. If i get triggered in to split soul delusions by some drunken guy pissing on a three, should i spend my life stalking him and messing up his?

here's the perfect example. Answering Iovara's question puts the past to rest? That's not what happens in the game. She literally says in that conversation that she can't help you. For a misunderstanding of this magnitude to occur suggests he's skipping the dialogue out of boredom

 

[Lacrymas]

i guess she was, because now she's leaving the company

What? Did I miss something?

 

[fantadomat]

As i said most of the game,until you met the crazed watcher in the stronghold,you had motivation,even if i knew how it will end. After that it is clear that no matter what you do,it will end badly for you. Everyone is saying the same thing,even the useless gods that you could have blackmailed in to fixing your soul for butchering that random goy that you know from 1000 years. And how do the insanity arc ends? With a retarded question "If you had to make same choice,would you do it again?",after you answer it you have put the past to rest. If only the watcher from the stronghold could have said "Don't care about your melodrama from the past faggots,leave me be!" and everything would have been ok. Fuck off obsidian! The story was retarded no two minds on it. As for the bad guy,you have absolutely no reason to interfere with his things. If i get triggered in to split soul delusions by some drunken guy pissing on a three, should i spend my life stalking him and messing up his?

here's the perfect example. Answering Iovara's question puts the past to rest? That's not what happens in the game. She literally says in that conversation that she can't help you. For a misunderstanding of this magnitude to occur suggests he's skipping the dialogue out of boredom

It depends on the dialogue choice,i did skip a lot of dialogue because i am replaying the game,but not hers. My dialogue was more of a "I am glad to see you here bitch.","Will do it all again,you heretic scum!" and "I will grind you pitiful soul to dust because of revenge! Buahahahaha suck on this nuts whore!!!". The worst thing was how offended i was supposed to be at the big boss and this supposed truth, i was role playing as fanatical dude that wouldn't be moved by the lies of some retarded whore,and all the options were some retarded sobbing bullshit. I didn't get the choice of "I agree with you mate,lets pump up Woedica with some soul juice!". The whole fight was totally pointless and idiotic,absolutely no reason to fight him,especially when i was agreeing with him 100%. It was boss fight because all the games have one.

 

[Infinitron]

i guess she was, because now she's leaving the company

What? Did I miss something?

Obsidian General Discussion Thread.

 

[2house2fly]

I agree they probably could have had more options with Thaos- you can replace him and do exactly what he was going to do, so it would make sense for you to just side with him. Though if that happened, you wouldn't be able to get the vision of the creation of the Gods from his memories and cure the Watcher's madness. Then again I'm sure the queen of the gods in all her glory could help you out with that.

 

[2house2fly]

They even build sympathy for him in the final dialogue, with the reveal that the in Engwithan response to finding out there were no gods was existential despair, which probably fuelled the mass suicide of their people. Plus in a flashback you talk about the husks of people who had their soul sucked out, and he mentions that he hopes to join them one day, meaning basically that he kind of wants to die. I'm not sure if they didn't include siding with him as an option because it would have taking up more development resources than just having a fight, or because they didn't want the game to end without an actual boss battle, or if it just didn't occur to them

 

[fantadomat]

I agree they probably could have had more options with Thaos- you can replace him and do exactly what he was going to do, so it would make sense for you to just side with him. Though if that happened, you wouldn't be able to get the vision of the creation of the Gods from his memories and cure the Watcher's madness. Then again I'm sure the queen of the gods in all her glory could help you out with that.

The whole Engwithan story was retarded as well,some idiot used a telescope,saw nothing in the sky and decided that there are no gods in the vers period. After that the rest just believed him and decided to make computers to be gods....yeah A+ writing here. I mean every person in the world will stop believing in their deity once they get the option to look trough Hubble(i know that it is in space) or some other telescope. Also why were Engwithan so advanced when the rest of the world was tribe people? It didn't make any sense at all,that is not how evolution works,this is not Wakanda.

I must admit that i skipped his soul drivel at the end,only red the dialogue. Still i saw that you get fixed for answering that bitch if you will do it all again,not killing the dude. Honestly that guy would have been the best companion in the game. It was shame that he was the "Bad" guy when he was the only person with worthy motivation.

 

[CptMace]

Define "so advanced". We know little besides the fact that they used souls to make super beings. It doesn't seem to be that advanced, actually it doesn't seem to require anything but knowledge.
Considering the souls as a tangible thing being the theme of poe, the whole story of gods being man-built by using these souls is actually an interesting idea. It gives more purpose to the animancy stuff (look the wonderous shit you can do), gives a proper reason for gods actually doing shit, and makes them vulnerable (see eothas who was basically dead because of the engwithan machines jailing his soul(s) and who wakes up for po2 after some sort of restoration process).
There are proper reasons to beat that dead horse of a writing, but the engwithans or their creation don't really do the trick.

 

[fantadomat]

I can see the vers and know that there are no god in it,also can make architectural marvels like skyscraper statue from magic rock......underground,can make gods also can become immortal(vampires in Caed Nua). In the end i am not advanced,i am just like all the tribe people poking themself with sharp sticks.
Also i just noticed how shit obsidian are with scale,it feel like Star trek episode,where the colonies have like 100 people and two shacks or how some planet is going to be destroyed but the whole population can fit in Enterprise's holodeck. Here we have a few thousands people dying and fucking up the Engwithan civilization,more people died during 9/11 let alone some big war. By now we should be extinct. The whole thing is a mess,too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone wrote their part and didn't think if it fits the setting.

EDIT:Also why did they create the gods that kill them??? They could have thrown the guy with the telescope from some skyscraper statue and be done with it,like we did a century ago. Why wipe your civilization and not kill the guys that mess with this shit?

 

[CptMace]

Basically, complaining that the world uses the trope of the ancient civilization that built wonders and disappeared and all it encompasses. Yet disregarding the original angle it gives on typical stuff like FR style tangible potent gods.
They can carve stone and manipulate soul magic, that's preposterous ! while the setting is clearly high fantasy, and it's clearly a case of ancient civilisation®, is just a very strange claim to make.
It's a very weak criticism. Unlike the poor narration and insufferable exposition, now that's where the writing sucks. Engwithans and gods are alright, really.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem is not that they created the gods, it's the why of it. A whole civilization had an existential crisis because they couldn't find any gods? How is that possible? Didn't they have a philosophical debate on the matter? Why would they assume life has no meaning without the gods? What meaning do the gods bring? Is it inherently good for life to have a meaning? If yes, why, if no, why not? How do they know creating gods will stop tribe warfare? Why is tribe warfare worse than the wars they have now? Why leave only a single individual to govern the whole thing? How did they decide on how many gods there will be and what function they'll have? Would creating gods fuck up the laws of physics? The questions pile on and on, and on and it's mind-numbing and ultimately pointless. It's pointless because literally nothing changes with this revelation and the status quo isn't moved in any way. The biggest "twist" in the narrative doesn't have narrative weight, that's some serious lack of a punch right there.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Why the fuck would you ignore XP and loot? It is like saying that you should ignore side quests because it will fuck up your main quest that is a lot more boring than the side ones. The game is made in way that you have max level by finishing the half of the content. This is poor design,should have made harder enemies in the end and had the 20 level soft cap.

Yup. I'm 100% convinced that low completion rates for PoE1 had a lot to do with Od Nua fucking up people's games beyond repair. Tying up main quest to Maerwald is really, really, really dumb. People see the main quest requires finding some guy in a dungeon, and then they see the dungeon has more levels, so they assume Od Nua is the main quest nad keep going without realizing there's whole world out there.

I've watched 2 of my friends now give up on the game exactly because of this. Continue in Od Nua until level 13 while still in act 1, entire party level 8 or something, armed to the teeth with great gear. They had to give up on the game shortly after reaching Defiance Bay because it was basically pointless to continue.

How Obsidian didn't see that coming is beyond me.

 

[fantadomat]

Basically, complaining that the world uses the trope of the ancient civilization that built wonders and disappeared and all it encompasses. Yet disregarding the original angle it gives on typical stuff like FR style tangible potent gods.
They can carve stone and manipulate soul magic, that's preposterous ! while the setting is clearly high fantasy, and it's clearly a case of ancient civilisation®, is just a very strange claim to make.
It's a very weak criticism. Unlike the poor narration and insufferable exposition, now that's where the writing sucks. Engwithans and gods are alright, really.

I don't have problem with the core of the story,i have problem with its exposition and the level of writing. Even i could come up with better variant of the story and i am pretty poor writer,even not a writer. Also it will be nice if you don't single out one of my points and hammer it,try out to argue my arguments and answer my question.

The problem is not that they created the gods, it's the why of it. A whole civilization had an existential crisis because they couldn't find any gods? How is that possible? Didn't they have a philosophical debate on the matter? Why would they assume life has no meaning without the gods? What meaning do the gods bring? Is it inherently good for life to have a meaning? If yes, why, if no, why not? How do they know creating gods will stop tribe warfare? Why is tribe warfare worse than the wars they have now? Why leave only a single individual to govern the whole thing? How did they decide on how many gods there will be and what function they'll have? Would creating gods fuck up the laws of physics? The questions pile on and on, and on and it's mind-numbing and ultimately pointless. It's pointless because literally nothing changes with this revelation and the status quo isn't moved in any way. The biggest "twist" in the narrative doesn't have narrative weight, that's some serious lack of a punch right there.

Yeah,it feels like it is written by a person that doesn't have the slightest idea how religion and believe work. You can have a nutjob proclaiming that X deity is talking to him and he could make a religion. But you don't get guy crying out that there are no gods because he can't see them and miraculously all those people that killed and waged wars in the name of gods decide to follow him. Also the gods were pretty retarded,instead of burning the asshole with divine punishment,they decided to drop a moon(that is another retardation,a moon will wipe everything no matter how small it is.) on the people,that is like killing fly with a tactical nuke.

 

[fantadomat]

Why the fuck would you ignore XP and loot? It is like saying that you should ignore side quests because it will fuck up your main quest that is a lot more boring than the side ones. The game is made in way that you have max level by finishing the half of the content. This is poor design,should have made harder enemies in the end and had the 20 level soft cap.

Yup. I'm 100% convinced that low completion rates for PoE1 had a lot to do with Od Nua fucking up people's games beyond repair. Tying up main quest to Maerwald is really, really, really dumb. People see the main quest requires finding some guy in a dungeon, and then they see the dungeon has more levels, so they assume Od Nua is the main quest nad keep going without realizing there's whole world out there.

I've watched 2 of my friends now give up on the game exactly because of this. Continue in Od Nua until level 13 while still in act 1, entire party level 8 or something, armed to the teeth with great gear. They had to give up on the game shortly after reaching Defiance Bay because it was basically pointless to continue.

How Obsidian didn't see that coming is beyond me.

I do like that feeling of seeing my enemies totally weak,but this should be a thing that happens later on,after the hard work is done. As a whole i really don't care about such things much,i am a storyfag and play such games mainly for the new story that learn from it. But even i could see that the level balance is fucked. Enjoyed seeing the final boss die without my party loosing even 1/4 of their health in 15 seconds.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Why the fuck would you ignore XP and loot? It is like saying that you should ignore side quests because it will fuck up your main quest that is a lot more boring than the side ones. The game is made in way that you have max level by finishing the half of the content. This is poor design,should have made harder enemies in the end and had the 20 level soft cap.

Yup. I'm 100% convinced that low completion rates for PoE1 had a lot to do with Od Nua fucking up people's games beyond repair. Tying up main quest to Maerwald is really, really, really dumb. People see the main quest requires finding some guy in a dungeon, and then they see the dungeon has more levels, so they assume Od Nua is the main quest nad keep going without realizing there's whole world out there.

I've watched 2 of my friends now give up on the game exactly because of this. Continue in Od Nua until level 13 while still in act 1, entire party level 8 or something, armed to the teeth with great gear. They had to give up on the game shortly after reaching Defiance Bay because it was basically pointless to continue.

How Obsidian didn't see that coming is beyond me.

Because Josh Sawyer has a habit of not understanding actual people and designed this "really intresting" dungeon because all he's interested in combat and meatgrinders.

 

[Ninjerk]

The problem is not that they created the gods, it's the why of it. A whole civilization had an existential crisis because they couldn't find any gods? How is that possible? Didn't they have a philosophical debate on the matter? Why would they assume life has no meaning without the gods? What meaning do the gods bring? Is it inherently good for life to have a meaning? If yes, why, if no, why not? How do they know creating gods will stop tribe warfare? Why is tribe warfare worse than the wars they have now? Why leave only a single individual to govern the whole thing? How did they decide on how many gods there will be and what function they'll have? Would creating gods fuck up the laws of physics? The questions pile on and on, and on and it's mind-numbing and ultimately pointless. It's pointless because literally nothing changes with this revelation and the status quo isn't moved in any way. The biggest "twist" in the narrative doesn't have narrative weight, that's some serious lack of a punch right there.

What the fuck did you just fucking say about the gods, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the pantheon, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Defiance Bay, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top cleric in the entire Eothanorwhatever armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Eora, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the Dyrwood and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Engwith and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

 

[CptMace]

don't single out one of my points and hammer it,try out to argue my arguments and answer my question.

I'm sorry that it feels like I've done that, but I sincerely don't think I did. I'd love to give you an answer to your questions, but I have just as much information as you on the subject, which is not much.

 

[fantadomat]

don't single out one of my points and hammer it,try out to argue my arguments and answer my question.

I'm sorry that it feels like I've done that, but I sincerely don't think I did. I'd love to give you an answer to your questions, but I have just as much information as you on the subject, which is not much.

And that is why the game have bad writing. They should have flashed out their civilization instead of making 15 level pointless dungeon with a lot of random shit that didn't make any sense. They could have made an interesting dungeon that shows their culture,society,tradition and believes. Thus making us understand why they would decide to do such a thing, But instead we have a generic mystic civilization X that decided to make god because their great goat fucker said that there are no gods.

Fuck more i write here,the more i think about the game and the more plotholes i find. By the morning there wouldn't be a single rational think left in the story....for me that is.

PS:I may sound a little bit adversarial,and i am,like to go a little passionate when debating . Still i do enjoy your posts in the codex and mean no ill will.

 

[2house2fly]

They skip over the exact details. What, you want more paragraphs of exposition? What's in the game is already simultaneously putting you to sleep and making your brain melt in confusion

 

[2house2fly]

Hey why doesn't the Master just put his plans on hold and research how to make fertile super mutants? There's only a few minutes before the Cathedral nuke blows, how does the vault dweller get far enough away not to be killed by it? How did a nuclear war even happen, did everyone involved not realise it would basically wipe out the human race? How did they convince everyone to go along with it? This game fucking sucks!

 

[existential_vacuum]

With less than a month to prepare for the epic Codex Deadfire Release Thread™, I'm bringing you the offical Deadfire Bingo: The Codex Thread Edition. Print it and kill your liver with despair on April 4th .

Spoiler

EDIT: Hŵrpa Dwrp

EDIT: fixed image hosting fuckery

 

[Got bored and left]

You forgot "Hŵrpa Dwrp".

 

[FreeKaner]

Put "Hŵrpa Dwrp" in free space.

Also can't wait for Roxor review.