Pillars of Eternity

[JimmyQ]

I haven't even pledged yet! Wait for me, people

Well, whatcha wait'n fer?

I see most crowdfunding campaigns as a gamble, and I usually pledge accordingly. Considering Obsidian and their previous offerings, though, this one was a no-brainer. Can't wait!

 

[M4xw0lf]

I was too lazy to look for my Fig account PW. Did now. Pledged 45$ for the premium digital version.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

Update #2 [h=3]Stretch Goal 1 Reached[/h] First stretch goal hit -- on to the next one!

Thanks to all of our fans, backers, and investors, for continuing to support Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire! We just reached our first stretch goal of $1.4 million,meaning sub-classes are now official in Pillars of Eternity II. Sweet!

Now, we're announcing two more stretch goals -- and, since you asked us, we'll be announcing them two at a time from now on.

First of these will trigger at $1.6 million, and features an increased level cap, along with localization for the game into the Russian language. Прикольно! Pillars II Design Director Josh Sawyer explains below:

Greetings. I wanted to write up a brief summary of what an increased level cap will do for Deadfire. I also wanted to explain how companion classes work, especially with regard to multiclassing.

The default level cap in Deadfire is 16, which is where Pillars of Eternity wound up after The White March was released. Raising the level cap to 18 will grant access to an entirely new level of abilities for all classes, from barbarian to wizard.

In our companion write-ups, you will see some characters described as class a/class b. This does not mean that they are forced to be multiclassed, but that the character's 1[SUP]st[/SUP] level must be from one of those classes. For example, Edér's class is fighter/rogue. From level 2 on, you may advance Edér as you see fit, but his first class must be either fighter or rogue. This gives you the ability to customize your party companions while not fundamentally deviating heavily from their core character concept. Note that some other characters, like Aloth, must always start from a single class because it is more central to their concept. You may multiclass Aloth as a wizard/fighter, a wizard/barbarian, or a wizard/cipher, but his first class will always be wizard.

--

The second stretch goal will be at $1.8 million, and will include the extremely excellent Xoti, an all-new companion for the player's party, along with Polish localization.

Xoti, a meadow folk/savannah folk priest/monk, is our seventh Deadfire companion. As a follower of Gaun, the aspect of Eothas associated with harvests, she wields a sickle and a lantern. When she was a young girl, she was one of thousands of Readcerans who came to Deadfire fleeing the devastation that followed the vorlas blight and the Saint's War. Her family, like many others, established themselves as farmers, and she fell in love with the lush jungles and bright beaches of her adopted homeland. She is intrigued by the rumors of Eothas' manifestation, but she fears what that will mean for her fellow expatriates, many of whom followed his previous incarnation into war and defeat.

The team is incredibly excited to keep bringing you fantastic content and expanding the game more and more. Again, thank you. We couldn't have gotten where we are without our awesome fans, and we'll need you with us to make Pillars II the greatest cRPG of all time.

fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=243#updates

 

[schinderhannes.999]

Level cap increase from 16 to 18 + Russian localization ✓

New stretch goal for $2.0M:

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I see most crowdfunding campaigns as a gamble, and I usually pledge accordingly.

Yes, especially Linux support (Larian, I'm looking at you, and insane delay of the Linux version of Divinity: Original Sin). But Obsidian have a good track record.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Pledged 45$ for the premium digital version.

Did you back Wasteland 3 there before? Then you should get $5 discount bonus.

 

[M4xw0lf]

Did you back Wasteland 3 there before? Then you should get $5 discount bonus.

I did, in fact. Where do I get that discount?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I did, in fact. Where do I get that discount?

I got an e-mail from Fig, with something like "super backer discount" notice. Once you pledge, if you click that link, you can edit your pledge, and discount will be listed in the add-ons / extras. Though it was glitching for me, and I had to contact Fig support to fix it. They did it pretty quickly.

 

[M4xw0lf]

I got an e-mail from Fig, with something like "super backer discount" notice. Once you pledge, if you click that link, you can edit your pledge, and discount will be listed in the add-ons / extras. Though it was glitching for me, and I had to contact Fig support to fix it. They did it pretty quickly.

Ah. Here's a catch then - for some reason I can'te seem to receive any mails from Fig. Not even the mail address confirmation mails. I already contacted support about it, but I fear they'd contact me by... mail.

 

[M4xw0lf]

Ha, it works now after trying for the umpteenth time.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

Update #3 [h=3]Level Up![/h] The Fig campaign for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire continues to steam ahead thanks to our awesome fans and backers. We've just unlocked a level cap raise from 16 to 18, meaning a whole slew of new character abilities. Craving even more news about Deadfire's design? We're prepping a big update for you, courtesy of Game Director Josh Sawyer, which will drop in the next few days. We've also got an update from Narrative Designer Carrie Patel coming on Tuesday, January 31st.

Polish localization is next, along with Xoti, the awesome priest/monk character who can join your party -- both of which will be unlocked at $1.8 million. We gave you plenty of info on Xoti in our previous update, so we wanted to focus this update on the $2 million stretch goal: player AI scripting for companions and Spanish language localization!

With the Pillars of Eternity: The White March, Part I, we introduced Player and Companion AI with a limited number of AI packages and settings that could be picked from. We got great feedback from the community and can expand on this feature in Pillars II. With this addition, you can customize AI behaviors with a visual UI allowing for the fine tuning spell-casting and ability use. For example, the order that an AI casts spells in can be defined and conditional logic can be set for each spell. This gives you the power to preset combat AI for Wizards, Priests, and Ciphers based on a variety of gameplay conditions. We plan on having this feature work for multi-classed characters as well, and we will have more details about the look of the UI very soon.

We know you all want to play Pillars II in your native languages, and that's why we will be including a new language in each stretch goal from now on until we run out of languages we're able to localize. We've got French, German, and Russian so far, with Polish and Spanish announced, plus many more languages coming in future stretch goals. Help us keep up the momentum!

Stay tuned for updates early this week from Design Director Josh Sawyer, and Narrative Designer Carrie Patel this Tuesday.

Thank you again for all your support!

The Pillars II Team

fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=244#updates

 

[volsung]

I'm looking forward to PoE 2 now. Happy too see there is still interest in traditional cRPG's. Recently talked with a coworker who said he preferred the Final Fantasy type of "RPG" over "Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights" because "the story was just an excuse to fight". Yeah I see where he's going, but both BG1 and NWN are terrible examples of story telling. I just can't conceive a so called "RPG" without choice. The games that excel at story telling and do not bother with choice are called adventure games where I come from.

Now a question. Regarding the stretch goals, I see why they'd want to attract attention by supporting more languages. Why are French & German in the basic tier though, and other large markets way below? According this this website the German videogame market was estimated, in 2016, to be around $4 Billion (short scale, 10[SUP]9[/SUP]) and the French (France only), around $2.77 B. If we add Switzerland and Austria to the german estimate, it is still below $5 B. In Russia the estimate is $1.3 B and in Poland, $0.43. Russian language was added with the third stretch goal and Polish will soon be added with the fourth. That's all great. I was wondering however why Spanish is in the fifth stretch goal if, once you add up the numbers for Spain (which is already above Russia), Mexico (right after Russia and above Poland) and a bunch of other Latin American countries, you end up with over $7 Billion. Technically the Spanish speaking market is larger even than the German market. I have four possible explanations: 1) Games like PoE are traditionally more popular in certain countries. 2) Because of language fragmentation (Europe vs. Americas) the Spanish-speaking market got used to playing games in English. 3) Companies underestimate the size/profit. 4) They are perfectly aware of this and are using this knowledge to secure the $2.0 M stretch goal. I play in English so it doesn't really affect me, but seeing that big chart in my email updates made me think about this. Thoughts?

 

[schinderhannes.999]

Could also just been that France and Germany happened to be two countries (after the States, Great Britain, Canada and other countries of the Anglosphere) with the most contributions during the Project Eternity Kickstarter back in 2012.
That and, despite the Hispanosphere having the largest share, there aren't actually that many Spanish-speaking people that give a shit about (crowdfunding) a spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine cRPGs.

Or one/some/all of the above possible explanations of yours.


Everyone comfortable with the few facts we know about Deadfire so far?

I don't know what to think about the party size getting knocked down from 6 to 5.
It probably makes for deeper and more complex interactions/synergies - both in and out of combat - between the party members and combat in general might actually get even more tactical and challenging because of the missing sixth companion but breaking with the tradition and not, at least leaving the door open (optional sixth companion) seems all kinds of wrong to me.
Modding it back in (and probably throwing the game off balance in the process) would be an option, if Obsidian stays true to their plans for official support this time around, but I'd rather have that option in the game right from the start.
Would also make an excellent stretch goal.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

Update #4 [h=3]Xoti Joins the Party![/h]
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire just hit $1.8M and got its coolest update yet, with Xoti, the priest/monk joining the adventure, and we can't wait for everyone to get to know her in their playthroughs. Thank you so much to our fans and backers for helping us bring Xoti into the game. We're far from done though! We have plenty more to talk about in our newly revealed stretch goal at $2.2 million, which includes three separate additions to Pillars II: watercolor NPC portraits, UI customization, and Italian language localization. Plus, there is an update from Carrie Patel coming today (Jan 31) about our returning companions, and a design update coming from Josh Sawyer on Thursday.

Before we get to the next stretch goal, however, we wanted to give you a bit more detail on our backer add-ons, available when you pledge to any of our tiers.

Audio CD Soundtrack: This is a physical disc copy of the soundtrack to Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. If you want to add the OST to your bookshelf or CD rack, this is the only way to get it. (COST: $20 + Shipping)

Extra Beta Access: If you want a second beta key to add to your purchase, this is the place to get that. So, for example, if you've purchased a tier that doesn't allow for beta access, but you want to get that, or if you want to purchase early access to Pillars II for a friend, you want this add-on. (COST: $20)

Obsidian T-Shirt: A black t-shirt with the Obsidian Entertainment logo on it. Don't forget to choose your size. (COST: $25 + Shipping)

Pillars II Backer T-Shirt: A t-shirt featuring the official logo of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. This is the only place on earth to get this shirt, unless you break into our offices and steal one. But don't do that. (COST: $25 + Shipping)

T-Shirt Pack: Both of the above two t-shirts (1 Obsidian shirt, and 1 Pillars II shirt) in a single package at a discounted price. (COST: $40 + Shipping)

Returning Companion Miniatures (Unpainted): A set of three, 28mm-high, pewter miniature figurines representing Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina, the three returning companions from Pillars I. These come unpainted. (COST: $25 + Shipping)

Returning Companion Miniatures (Painted): The same set of three, 28mm-high, pewter miniature figurines of Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina, but beautifully painted in full color. (COST: $40 + Shipping)

Extra Digital Copy of Pillars II: An additional digital download key for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, available on your platform of choice. (Cost: $29)

Extra Digital Copy Bundle: Three digital download keys of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire provided at a bulk rate discount. (Cost: $80)

Obsidian Entertainment Hoodie: A black hoodie with the Obsidian Entertainment logo emblazoned on the front. Don't forget to choose your size. (Cost: $60 + Shipping)

Limited Signed Print: An exclusive, limited-edition art print from Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, signed by members of the team. (Cost: $100 + Shipping)

Now, it wouldn't be a proper update if we didn't give you info about our newest stretch goal. In addition to Italian language localization, this one has two features. First, we would like to create unique portraits for every quest-giving NPC across the entire game. Portraits are a wordless way to tell a story about a character and this is something we wished we could have done more with in the first game. Our talented 2D artist, Matt Hansen, has developed a watercolor-style portrait for conversations that could allow us to add many, many more portraits to the game.

Second, we would like to add a highly requested feature, UI Customization. Inspired by the mod community from Pillars of Eternity, we would like to add in the option to customize the position of UI elements, toggle pieces of the UI on and off, adjust HUD transparency, and much more.

With the help of our backers, we've already added so much to Pillars II, now we can add in two more really cool features that we know our fans and players will love. As always, we want to thank you so much for your support!

fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=245#updates

 

[schinderhannes.999]

[h=1]Inside Pillars Of Eternity II: Deadfire With Game Director Josh Sawyer[/h]
I got a chance to talk with Josh Sawyer, Game Director and Narrative Lead for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, about some of the changes we can expect to see out of the sequel and a little bit about a future stretch goal for the project’s Fig campaign you may remember me posting about last week. While he did remain quiet on what exactly the future goal will be, he mentioned that one he’s looking forward to is the replacement for the Stronghold from the original Pillars.

MR: I’ll start of with the basics. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, why name it that?

JS: Because its an awesome name. With Pillars I we had already established old Vailian, Aedyr, and all of these other places. And one of the places we came up with was this chain of mostly dormant volcanoes on this vast archipelago named Deadfire. And that just sounded cool. And when we were talking about making a sequel we talked about places to set it. Because Pillars of Eternity was set in a very traditional fantasy zone, European style kind of temperate forests, we wanted to move it somewhere that was a little less familiar in terms of fantasy so we talked about living lands and tons of other places, but then Deadfire seemed to be a really cool choice because it promises pirates and sea monsters and, you know, Polynesian architecture and language and things like that. So the region sounded very appealing and I always thought the name sounded pretty cool. So that’s what we went with.

MR: Very cool, so moving on from the sort of European-centric RPG environment and going to more of a world-inclusive one, what else have you guys included in Pillars of Eternity II that we should be looking for? Things that might not have been in the first one?

JS: Well, in terms of story and setting things, we do want to have continuity with the first game. So, for example, cultures like the Vailian Republic or Rauatai are still present here but they’re present as colonial powers. Something we tried to introduce in Pillars of Eternity was – instead of making it be set during a quasi-medieval period its set in a early renaissance period. So we’re getting into the age of exploration and colonization and the expansion of imperialist powers. The Dyrwood has already been colonized and that was the setting for Pillars I, but Deadfire is currently being colonized and sort of imperialist forces are moving in and either trying to set up their own colonies or set up their own deals with the native cultures for you know wether its shipping rights or access to resources or various things. So we’re trying to highlight social conflicts that you don’t always necessarily see in most fantasy settings. At least, that’s from a sort of story and setting perspective. Or were you asking more about features and things like that?

MR: Both work. Story and setting is always good to know. Including more real-world things like the effects of imperialism is good to see in games. Maybe its just me but I like that sort of thing. As for features to watch out for, is there anything you guys find particularly telling about Deadfire?

JS: I think that, what people notice right away looking at the game is how much better it looks than Pillars of Eternity I. With Pillars I we were trying to get back to a style of game visually that we had not needed in a long time and that most people weren’t making games of that style – which is environments that are 2D rendered out with 3D characters on top of it. Most games these days are either purely 2D or more often they’re just completely 3D. And we loved working with 2D backgrounds back at Black Isle because I worked on the original Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II and you can get a really high level of quality in those 2D renders and we also loved painting over those backgrounds to bring out a lot of cool, little, tiny details that you normally just can’t get from a 3D environment. So we’ve improved the lighting a great deal, we’ve improved the quality of our character models, we’ve introduced a lot of dynamic elements including dynamic weather and dynamic foliage. They really make the levels feel much more alive. We got a lot of feedback from players that, they thought the levels were very pretty but that they were very static. So we’re hoping that a lot of these new features really make those levels feel much more beautiful and much more contemporary. They don’t look like higher res versions of the maps that we made 15 years ago. And then in terms of new features, since the game is funded we are now committing to doing multi-classing. Which is a big deal. In Pillars I you could just, whatever your character class was, that’s what you would advance as. In Pillars II, you have the option of taking an additional class and advancing that in parallel, or separately – you can go back and forth – it opens up a lot of new character build opportunities which I think is very, very cool. I’m trying to think of other major things to sort of think about for a second. Oh, subclasses. Oh yeah, that’s another big thing. So, in Baldur’s Gate II a thing that they introduced was – they didn’t obviously want to expand on the base class list a great deal so they had kits, and kits were things like “the berserker” or “the inquisitor” or “the assassin,” things like that which are a specialization or a focus of an individual class. So, we hit our funding goal for subclasses meaning we’re going to be introducing two subclasses for each base class. And those are another way that players can kind of focus on a particular aspect of a character class. And a lot of people really like the idea of specializing and having that very specific type of character in mind. So subclasses will hopefully allow people to get more of that in their character, more of a specialist.

MR: More of a chose-your-own character build rather than a ‘you chose one of the five options and roll with it.’

JS: Yeah.

MR: Very interesting. So it’s mostly being funded by fans but are you looking to draw in a larger base of players with Pillars II?

JS: Yeah. So Fig- I mean, one of the reasons we’re using Fig is because it offers the opportunity for investment to the backers who of course, we love our backers. We say this as many times as we can, we love our backers, we wouldn’t have been able to make Pillars I without them, we woudn’t be able to make Pillars II without them. The opportunity for investors to contribute is also very cool. And we do want to increase – we want Pillars II to be a bigger success than Pillars I. So we do want new players to come into this. We do want them to fall in love with this type of game. In a lot of cases that means that, we need to tutorialize things better. We’re looking at ways to introduce certain mechanics more clearly to people. A lot of people who came to Pillars never having played the Infinity Engine games were hit kind of hard by the difficulty curve. So by no means do we want to make the game less tactically challenging. In some ways we’re actually making it significantly more tactically challenging. And we’re hoping that what we’ve learned from Pillars I will allow new players to come into the experience a little more gradually and understand things a little more progressively.

MR: So will that also work in some of the way the story unfolds, to allow players to jump in with Pillars II without having to go back and re-read the Pillars of Eternity Wikipedia summary?

JS: Yeah, the beginning of the game is going to be- it’s always a big focus for us. My philosophy on the beginning of the game is to always work on it toward the end of the game. So, when you develop the first area of the game first, you wind up remaking that area 3-5 times. That’s not an exaggeration. Because, as you go along you realize ‘ugh damnit, we didn’t talk about this’ or ‘aw crap, that’s not – that’s not even a thing anymore’ or like ‘uh- we got rid of that mechanic’ or ‘we added this mechanic.’ So we usually handle the beginning of the game later in development but its an ongoing thing where we talk about how are we going to set up new players so that we can catch them up to speed we can catch them up on all the crazy lore that went through Pillars I. Also, we don’t want to bore players who know every little bit and piece of the first game and want to just sort of skip over that stuff and get into the game. One thing that we’re doing that I really hope people appreciate and that I love from another recent game that Obsidian made which is called Tyranny. In Tyranny they introduced this feature which is this sort of lore highlight. So in dialogue sometimes people will mention a term and instead of explaining it in some sort of very verbose fashion, especially if its something that’s already been discussed before, you could just highlight it and you get a little pop-up that tells you exactly what that thing is. Whether its, you know, a little bit of background on the god, or a culture that you might only be a little familiar with, or in some cases, if something that’s happening in the world as a reaction to a choice that you made earlier, that highlight system allows the game to call it out without the player having to be sort of like stopped in the flow of the middle of their conversation. So if someone already knows what the Vailian Republics are and that sort of stuff, we don’t want to just regurgitate a whole bunch of text. But if someone goes ‘uh I think I know what that is’ they can just highlight that little bit of text and get a quick pop-up and then return to reading the dialogue.

MR: It’s a little bit more intuitive and doesn’t really stop things as much as say going into an appendix and reading a whole article on the term you looked up.

JS: We will still have the encyclopedia because we know that a lot of people, they either prefer to learn more that way or some people just like browsing through it rather than reading all the entries. So we’ll always have those entries there but the little lore highlighting is just a more elegant way to handle mid-conversation callouts.

MR: Switching tracks, are there any funding goals you guys really want to hit?

JS: All of ‘em. One thing is that we want to hit as many of our localization goals as possible. RPGs we find have fans all over the world. We especially, we kind of ordered our stretch goals for localization according to the sort of places that we wind up selling the most units, specific so French and German. We have a ton of fans in France and Germany. RPGs are really strong in those countries and we have a lot of backers in those countries. But, its really cool like, with Pillars I we eventually even got localization versions in Japan and Korea and I think the Japan one was really a fan localization which was really incredible. So when we can hit those goals thats really cool because if we can get good translations of those it just allows a wider audience to experience that stuff. And. I don’t want to spoil too much about our upcoming stretch goals but we have some- we have – the things we think are coolest are when we can just make the game better for everyone overall. So there are some new features, for example, we- we’re not gonna have the stronghold in Pillars II but we’re gonna have something that is taking its place that is very, very cool. And we’re gonna be talking and I really hope that basically people get excited about it and that any stretch content associated with that – well, we want to do it and I think that people are gonna get really excited about it.

MR: I get the feeling you aren’t going to tell me any more about that. Alright, so I know the games are a spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate games and Icewind Dale, but are there any other games outside of that history you guys are pulling pieces from?

JS: Yeah, one of our most popular features is something called “scripted interactions” which are these little storybook “choose your own adventure” type sequences. And I was personally inspired to do them by playing 1992’s Darklands which is a historical fantasy RPG and its really cool because our game is not super high budget and sometimes we want to do something like swing on a rope across a chasm or something or climb up this craggy cliff and its something where we don’t really want to spend the animation budget to do it and most of our interactions are very text based anyway, we use these illustrations combined with text descriptions to paint a picture for the player. The illustrations are very beautiful and the descriptions are really cool and they allow us to do all sorts of interesting one-off kind of things like swimming down a tunnel in a cave or something like that where – how do we even represent that in an isometric game. That would be very difficult. So features like that we’ve expanded the scripted interactions quite a bit to be honest. The interface is much better. We want to do as many of them as possible because people seem to really, really like doing them. They make the game feel much more like a tabletop roleplaying session where you’re doing things more organically according to the skills and abilities people have. So that was a big inspiration. I’m trying to think if we have anything else that’s sort of a big inspiration for us. Torment is, for us, of course an inspiration for us. In dialogue we use a lot of prose descriptions and those come from Planescape: Torment. The other Infinity Engine games never did. So we continue to want to explore mature themes like that. So Planescape obviously dealt with some more mature themes, sort of like esoteric thoughts. That’s one of the reasons why we felt like some things like reincarnations, and faith, and the gods, and the place of religion in the world. So Torment and Mask of the Betrayer are big influences for those.

MR: Was there anything in particular you focused on improving this time around?

JS: One big focus of mine was involving the story – so one shift in focus is on Pillars of Eternity I, I was the game director and I was also the system lead. And I was the only system designer for most of the project which was a little rough. On Deadfire we now have a new lead systems designer Dave Williams who is really fantastic. And I’ve shifted my responsibilities more toward narrative lead. And so I’m focusing a lot more on how the story is developed and structured and one of my big areas of attention is to try to make the game much more open for players. I believe that player freedom is extremely important. I want people to be able to play the game the way they want to. I want them to be able to make the alliances they want to make and have those alliances feel really important and meaningful. So if I choose to side with a certain faction and spurn a different faction, that actually changes my experience throughout the game. Also I can choose to go agains everyone and just be this huge psycho, which is something that when I worked on Fallout: New Vegas that’s something I worked on emphasizing with John Gonazalez to make sure that the player always has a way to make it through the game and that they don’t feel like their choices are going to restrict their ability to change their experience and how the go through. It might become harder but it is their own experience. So the way in which you explore the world is much more open in Deadfire and that also applies to how you develop the story and choose to move toward the end of the game and I think that the way we’re developing, there’s a much greater focus on that sort of story development and player choice. And that really excites me and I think that players respond very well to it. So I’m looking forward to seeing how people make their way through the story and how their opinions sort of form about the different factions and what the pros and cons are.

Sawyer also confirmed that the game will be run on the Unity 5 engine.

bleedingcool.com/2017/01/31/inside-pillars-eternity-ii-deadfire-game-director-josh-sawyer/

 

[JimmyQ]

While I don't know what kind of portraits the pc or companions will have, those portraits don't seem like they'll match up or fit in with the rest of the game. I'd rather have consistency there. Quest givers having portraits isn't really important to me, anyway.

Edit: Also, beware of PoE1 endgame spoilers in next post below.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

An odd choice for sure.
At least they don't go for the from-the-waist-up 3D stand-ins that were 'gracing' Tyranny's dialogue panels.

Update #5 A Few Words on Returning Companions

As one of the writers on the original Pillars of Eternity and the White March expansions, I'm delighted to return to the world of Eora and bring along a few old friends. Aloth, Pallegina, and Edér will join you, the Watcher, in Deadfire, provided they survived their adventures in the Dyrwood. You'll find, however, that they've changed in the intervening years, and the people they've become depends in large part on how you left them at the end of Pillars of Eternity.

Spoiler: Spoilers in regards to possible fates of Edér, Aloth and Pallegina ahead

After the first game concludes, Aloth either becomes the new grandmaster of the Leaden Key or sets out to dismantle it. Both outcomes leave him chasing the mysteries of the gods, so it's no surprise that he comes to the Deadfire following many of the same leads as the Watcher. In either case, he's not the meek, deferential elf he used to be. Especially if the Watcher kept Iselmyr with him.

When the Watcher meets Pallegina in Defiance Bay, she's a paladin torn between conscience and duty. Depending on whether she obeys or defies her ducs' orders, she may end up honored or banished by the Brotherhood of the Five Suns. Regardless, Vailian interests pull her into the archipelago, whether as an elite champion, a disgraced soldier, or a humble Kind Wayfarer.

As an Eothasian and a Dyrwoodan, Edér struggled between faith in his god and loyalty to his country. When he learned the gods were not what he'd always believed, he found either comfort or freedom in that notion. He then went on to lead an underground Eothasian organization or revive the town of Dyrford accordingly. Yet whichever path he took, Edér accompanies the Watcher to Deadfire, hoping to help his old friend and learn what's become of his god.

Of course, if you sacrificed Aloth to the blood pool or lost Pallegina and Edér fighting the alpine dragon,

you can replace them with custom adventurers knowing your choices (really) mattered...

Companions are set to be more tightly integrated with the narrative of Deadfire, so we wanted to bring back those whose personal stories will best tie in with the Watcher's and with the conflict unfolding in the archipelago. And wherever their new journey takes them, it's sure to test, challenge, and change them - and the Watcher - together.

-- Carrie Patel, Narrative Designer

fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=247#updates

 

[JimmyQ]

schinderhannes.999 That one's...rather spoilery. The actual update was edited accordingly. Maybe you should do the same with your post? I do like the sound of all that, although be damned if I remember how I handled Iselmyr in my first game : / .

 

[schinderhannes.999]

The player character and companions will have their own watercolor style portraits that will be utilized in this UI [dialogue panels]. We all agree it looked very odd to have the fully painted portraits alongside the NPC portraits.

forums.obsidian.net/topic/91346-the-watercolor-style-portraits/page-3#entry1879045

 

[schinderhannes.999]

Recording of the Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Q&A with Josh Sawyer from a few minutes ago:

twitch.tv/videos/119024818?t=09m42s