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[thegoatgod_pan]

Yeah, like many in this thread I hope this is more Tyranny and less Pillars, but the pirating angle gives hope. Apparently it also continues your choices from Pillars 1 (or the expansions). Not sure what that will look like, pragmatically speaking, considering every character apparently decides to become a sea-rover now.

[Damiac]

Those backer npcs were kinda annoying, but didn't the game tell you about talking to souls in pretty much the first village after the tutorially bit?  Talking to that hanged dwarf woman gives you the basic outline, from what I recall.

Yeah there were a bunch of them before the dwarf woman.  Once I talked to the dwarf woman I realized what was supposed to have happened, but those dumb backer npcs were just spattered all over the game. Honestly reading a few of those stupid dialogs in full is one of the things that burned me out on the writing in that game.  It was just not worth my time to read the dumb garbage the game was spewing at me, and that's unfortunate for a story driven RPG.  By the time I realized the backer NPCs had a slightly different shade behind their nameplate, it was too late, I was already in rush through the stupid dialog mode.

[Biowraith]

Oh, I only remember there being a couple of them before the dwarf woman (to the side of the path leading up to the tree).  It's been a while though and my last couple playthroughs I went straight to the dwarf after my first rest, so maybe there's others I'm forgetting or missed.  In any case, agreed that they sucked, though I'm getting the sense that they spoiled the game for you a bit more than for me :p

[Retropunch]

Yeah the backer NPC thing was a bit of a misstep in my opinion and caused me to burn out a bit too. In a story based RPG, the rule of thumb is to talk to everyone in case they give you something interesting - I didn't realise for a good few hours that none of them said anything remotely related to the story/did anything.

I'm playing it again with IEmod installed and it's really improved it and got rid of a lot of annoyances, so I'd encourage anyone thinking of having a playthrough before dreadfire using it.

[Kanil]

Has it been mentioned how many companions the game is going to have? I was annoyed by how few there were in the first one, of the six I happened across, I really only liked two of them, which meant my party was rounded out with quite a few generic mercenaries... ... themselves made even more unremarkable by how few voices there were to choose from for 'em.

[Biowraith]

Seems similarly limited: according to the wiki, there's 7 companions and 4 sidekicks.  From what I understand sidekicks are similar to companions but don't have a personal quest (besides potentially a quest to recruit them) and aren't part of the relationship system.  More backstory and personality than the generic mercenaries, but less 'stuff' to do with them than a companion.

[Kanil]

Thank you for the information. Depending upon how interactive the sidekicks are, that doesn't seem too bad. I shouldn't have problems getting a full party going, given that the two folks I liked from the first game are back.

[Harry Baldman]

Has it been mentioned how many companions the game is going to have? I was annoyed by how few there were in the first one, of the six I happened across, I really only liked two of them, which meant my party was rounded out with quite a few generic mercenaries... ... themselves made even more unremarkable by how few voices there were to choose from for 'em.

I had a lot of fun with the custom party because with only a couple exceptions like Durance (who is unpleasant, I'll grant you, but in a way I couldn't help but respect, plus the payoff for taking him along the entire way and exploring his plot is awesome in its own right) the NPCs tended not to be worth taking along anyhow. Plus I could just give them no voices at all and not have to worry about them spouting off repetitive soundbites about not wanting to alarm me but also dying of poisoning.

[Kagus]

I think that's one thing that bothered me with BG2, specifically the extended edition. I felt that the new characters were, for the most part, extremely dumb. But if you wanted access to some really cool items, then you needed to put up with them for the whole of their dumb story.

The big problem here is that some of those items could be used by anybody, not just the characters in question. This meant things like if you were playing a wild mage yourself, then you'd need to double up with Neera and deal with her yapping for all of her questline in order to get some of the best wild mage gear in the game, and only then would you be able to dump her somewhere and carry on with whatever you actually wanted to be doing.

That... I don't like that. Character quest equipment should be limited to the character the quest is for, allowing you to beef up a party member you already have an interest in, given that you went out of your way to do their story.


And the fact that you had to do ALL of their stories to some degree in order to unlock Wilson... Well, okay, he's supposed to be a secret, so I can't really argue with that.

[Harry Baldman]

My favorite BG2 moral dilemma was having one of the best swords in the game, Carsomyr, be usable only by paladins and also having the good solution to the single available paladin NPC's personal quest be him retiring from adventuring permanently to spend time with his estranged family. I wish more games would do moral choices where the good option actually hurts you a lot.

[Kagus]

Heh, yeah, Keldorn was great. I mean, getting a lesson in morality from the dandy fop was a bit strange, but I also liked the moral dilemmas in his story.

I believe it's actually possible to groom Anomen in such a way that his class gets changed to paladin, but that involves having to put up with Anomen... And nobody wants that.

Alternatively, get a swashbuckler up to epic levels and pick Use Any Item for glorious stupidity. Yes, you can "trick" carsomyr into thinking that you're a paladin. And Lawful Good.

EDIT: Actually, Blade would probably be a better pick, as they can actually put points into two-handed swords. Swashbuckler was just the first thing that came to mind.

UAI is always just stupid fun though, regardless of what you use it for.

[Harry Baldman]

I always have Jan Jansen in my party, so he's always the one to get Use Any Item eventually and thus the only one qualified to wield the Holy Avenger. I like to picture him having it on his mantelpiece somewhere during the epilogue.

On that topic, I hope they've improved the dang item system this time around. PoE's magic items were dismally underwhelming compared to BG's, although admittedly I didn't ever get around to grabbing The White March, maybe the soulbound weapon mechanic was actually good?

[ZeroGravitas]

released today, haven't had a chance to play

any impressions?

[umiman]

Well, I played a few minutes of the new one. Turns out there's a whole bunch of shit tied to the first one and I was so completely lost in character creation (because it constantly asks you and talks to you about stuff you're supposed to have done) that I gave up.

I'm trying to force myself to play through the first one, but it's so tedious and boring I really don't want to. Also all those backer NPCs... ugh.

At this point I'm tempted to turn difficulty to babymode and just speed through the story.

[Persus13]

I'm trying to finish the old one too, but load times are the main killer for me. I still don't get all the complaints about the backer NPCs, they're really easy to ignore.