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Vailians have the best hats, so they are the best faction. Easy peasy. Pallegina's tragic flaw is that she can't wear a jaunty Vailian cap. It's why she overcompensates so hard.
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Jun 19, 2019 07:38
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Zore posted:Lol, yeah going around assassinating local leaders while annexing another nation to turn them into a breadbasket for your lovely homeland is 'benevolent' I take it you failed to understand the White Man's Burden part. "We are going to make you civilized, even tho its going to hurt you to do. Its better for you in the long run." It's benevolent, even if seriously misguided and arguably ultimately evil because of how it ends up. It's still a road to hell being paved with good intentions.
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Jun 19, 2019 07:59
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Zane posted:it's a very contrived situation to sit in imaginary moral judgment of these enormous historical processes. especially if you're a european-american living in the western hemisphere. poe2 creates that situation through the benefit of hindsight and immense allegorical simplification. but no one in the actual analogous situation of the early modern world was capable of exercising the same moral judgment. the best lesson to come away with is that the historical circumstances people found themselves in were very complicated. in, conclusion, the deadfire archipelago is, a land of contrasts
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Jun 19, 2019 11:01
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RFC2324 posted:I take it you failed to understand the White Man's Burden part. "We are going to make you civilized, even tho its going to hurt you to do. Its better for you in the long run." The supposed good intentions are an afterthought, created to produce an alternative rationalisation for a pretty explicitly self interested project.
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Jun 19, 2019 11:11
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User posted:Vailians have the best hats, so they are the best faction. Easy peasy. Pallegina's tragic flaw is that she can't wear a jaunty Vailian cap. It's why she overcompensates so hard. if by PoE3 your paladin pal, pallegina doesn't have some big floppy visor maybe there's just no point to this series
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Jun 19, 2019 11:13
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Lack of hats is, in fact, my only regret about playing a godlike
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Jun 19, 2019 11:21
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Also being godlike means everyone ignores your actual race. Everyone was racist to me because I have a strange face, not because I'm Orlan.
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Jun 19, 2019 11:37
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ilitarist posted:Also being godlike means everyone ignores your actual race. Everyone was racist to me because I have a strange face, not because I'm Orlan. You're telling me there aren't any good dialog lines for rolling up to the watershaper's guild as an aumaua water godlike? I would think Tekehu would cartwheel behind you and push you up to take his place in society.
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Jun 19, 2019 11:46
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Clanpot Shake posted:You're telling me there aren't any good dialog lines for rolling up to the watershaper's guild as an aumaua water godlike? I would think Tekehu would cartwheel behind you and push you up to take his place in society. He means if you pick orlan body type they react to you being godlike, not orlan. Which would make no sense since godlike is the actual race there, not orlan.
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Jun 19, 2019 11:50
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RFC2324 posted:He means if you pick orlan body type they react to you being godlike, not orlan. No I got that, my point was that there are some pretty obvious opportunities to react to the combination of race and godlike status. Imagine running through Pallegina's companion quest as a birdperson savannah human. "I felt like a monster, grow a... a beak." Peak hawkward.
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Jun 19, 2019 12:00
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As far as I can tell your Godlike body type is not checked anywhere. This would invalidate frequent Amaua from Deadfire checks.
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Jun 19, 2019 12:03
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Gobblecoque posted:Telling all the powers to eat a dick is not only the most immediately satisfying but also the only decent choice for the long term. If the only way for these powers to achieve empire is for it to be gifted to them by a random errant adventurer then their future is hosed. They need to be able to stand on their own feet, and none of them can do that yet. That you can't leverage your own growing influence in the area to play these tools against eachother and start up your own Empire is sad. It's not like you have somewhere to return to considering Eothas ruined your house. And the islands clearly need new management. For their own good.
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Jun 19, 2019 13:15
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Cynic Jester posted:That you can't leverage your own growing influence in the area to play these tools against eachother and start up your own Empire is sad. It's not like you have somewhere to return to considering Eothas ruined your house. And the islands clearly need new management. For their own good. That sounds a lot like the RDC solution to be honest. Oh, you wanted that except you're the one on top? Interesting perspective.
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Jun 19, 2019 13:31
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Jabor posted:That sounds a lot like the RDC solution to be honest. The only way to ensure a country develops the way you want is to rule it with an adra fist.
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Jun 19, 2019 13:35
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Clanpot Shake posted:No I got that, my point was that there are some pretty obvious opportunities to react to the combination of race and godlike status. Imagine running through Pallegina's companion quest as a birdperson savannah human. "I felt like a monster, grow a... a beak." Peak hawkward. While I don't disagree, that would add a whole extra level of complexity. ilitarist posted:This would invalidate frequent Amaua from Deadfire checks. Also this. Doing that would make playing basically any other race pointless since godlike do everything else better. Except hats. I need hats. A death godlike orlan would be fun tho, everyone would fear and hate you.
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Jun 19, 2019 13:51
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The only faction in the game that congratulated me on killing a dude via a Looney Tunes-esque piano bomb were the New Blood Principi, so they're clearly the only motherfuckers in Deadfire who are cool.
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Jun 19, 2019 14:09
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that quest definitely did own i know there's like six different ways to resolve it but I can't help myself but put the bomb in the piano everytime
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Jun 19, 2019 14:17
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There's canonically only one solution to that quest and it is the piano.
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Jun 19, 2019 14:25
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On my first try I just went to that fort ASAP, before visiting Neketaka, and stealthily lured Benny outside after killing a bunch of pirates in the dungeons. Was nice too.
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Jun 19, 2019 14:53
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I know i'm in the minority, but is there anyone else in the thread that found Thaos to be an actually compelling villain? I liked him quite a bit, thinking him to be a bit similar to Morrowind's Dagoth Ur. He's always presented as this sort-of background threat, even though you run across him multiple times. And I actually felt the Leaden Key's goals, while misguided, were understandable from a certain perspective. I like that Thaos himself is not a mustache twirling crazyman. Also, once you've completed the game, or at least far enough into the main quest, you get to see how much he actually affected in the Dyrwood irt Waidwan's Legacy. We even see him early in the game doing maintenance on the Legacy with the twirly machine, and don't know who he is at that point. Main point is, despite POE 1 supposedly being a first draft of the narrative, I found the narrative to be mostly compelling and the villain relatively sympathetic, to a point. The only issue I can think of really is how pushed to the background the Watcher's "curse" ends up being. You're told to expect to go batshit mad once your former personalities start pushing through, and we see that a little bit both with Maerwald and the occasional ghost flitting around, but it's a non issue for the most part. Granted, I'm not sure a better way to handle that outside of a time limit or something akin to Mask of the Betrayer's Spirit Meter, which I don't think would work in an 80+ hour RPG.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:05
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My problem with Thaos was you only remotely get what he's doing at the very end of the game. Sometimes the game asks you why are you following him and I remember this question confusing me. Even the game is not sure why am I advancing the plot. I think he hunts watchers, but you see very little evidence of it being busy fighting dragons and dozens of other people who want you dead. After act II you can see he doesn't like animancy and doesn't want it to progress but this doesn't seem that villainous, it's all presented as a grey are so you can agree with that. You only learn what he wants when you through yourself into a dungeon with no way back. Compared to Dagoth Ur - everyone knows that he's bad. He pesters you with dreams and sends assassins. You can talk about him with anybody. But in PoE1 the only person who knows Thaos is Lady Webb and she was his companion, I think, and is rather unreliable. He may work retroactively but playing the game I've asked myself why didn't they set it during the Saint's War. Waidwen seemed like an already written great complex villain.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:14
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ilitarist posted:My problem with Thaos was you only remotely get what he's doing at the very end of the game. Sometimes the game asks you why are you following him and I remember this question confusing me. Even the game is not sure why am I advancing the plot. I think he hunts watchers, but you see very little evidence of it being busy fighting dragons and dozens of other people who want you dead. After act II you can see he doesn't like animancy and doesn't want it to progress but this doesn't seem that villainous, it's all presented as a grey are so you can agree with that. You only learn what he wants when you through yourself into a dungeon with no way back. I thought that part was clear though? You're hunting him because you have a question, a very important question to ask him that you recognized once your watcher ability "came online". And as you start catching up to him, you begin to realize how much of a threat he is to the whole region. I DO agree that maybe a prequel game set during the Saint's War would be fantastic. An Obvious NPC choice would be Eder's brother.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:17
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I have no strong feelings on Thaos one way or another, think he’s fine and played the role the story needed. He also seems like a close and possibly intentional Sarevok analogue to me - both of them you have an early chance encounter where they unintentionally ruin your life then disappear for most of the remaining game. You also spend both games bumbling around dealing with seemingly unrelated problems but then find out they caused the crisis behind most of them - and also find out there’s a personal connection after all. But still don’t directly confront them until the very end.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:22
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The voice actor for Thaos gave a really good performance in PoE1. Not David Warner level of outstanding scenery-chewing villainy, but I totally bought him as an undying cult leader. I think it might be how reedy his voice is that does it.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:23
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En Garde Motherfuckers posted:The voice actor for Thaos gave a really good performance in PoE1. Not David Warner level of outstanding scenery-chewing villainy, but I totally bought him as an undying cult leader. I think it might be how reedy his voice is that does it. I was thinking about mentioning this as well. His voice is subdued but commanding. He speaks like someone that is absolutely not used to anyone challenging anything he says to the point where he's practically worshipped by the Leaden Key cultists.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:27
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chaosapiant posted:I know i'm in the minority, but is there anyone else in the thread that found Thaos to be an actually compelling villain? I found his characterization interesting, but didn't find him to be compelling. A large part of this is that the consequences of his actions are either impersonal, accidental, or not explored sufficiently, and it's therefore hard to feel the appropriate level of empathy for his victims to make him feel villainous. We're told the Hollowborn crisis is bad, but you only see slivers of its impact in Gilded Vale (the gloomy atmosphere, the quest to deliver the quack tonic, Raedric's questline). You don't get anything near, say, Children of Men, where women are pushing around empty strollers and normalcy has disintegrated into apocalyptic barbarism.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:27
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i dont know gilded vale seems pretty godawful to me
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Jun 19, 2019 15:31
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welcome to the town square, here's our corpse tree
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Jun 19, 2019 15:31
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Avalerion posted:I have no strong feelings on Thaos one way or another, think he’s fine and played the role the story needed. He also has a bit of Irenicus in him in that he takes something from you (for Irenicus, that was your soul, and for Thaos, it's your sanity) and you spend the whole game trying to get that back. And like Irenicus he couldn't give two shits about you after you've served your purpose for him.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:36
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Berke Negri posted:i dont know gilded vale seems pretty godawful to me itsfreerealestate.gif
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Jun 19, 2019 15:38
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Ginette Reno posted:He also has a bit of Irenicus in him in that he takes something from you (for Irenicus, that was your soul, and for Thaos, it's your sanity) and you spend the whole game trying to get that back. And like Irenicus he couldn't give two shits about you after you've served your purpose for him. Honestly, I think this is the main thing working against Thaos. This and the fact that PoE was heavily marketed as an homage to Baldur's Gate and it's spinoffs. The big bad is an evil wizard who hosed with your soul and has a spooky mask. It's really, really hard to not compare him to Irenicus and that's not a comparison he can win. All of Irenicus's weak points have been washed away by two decades of nostalgia, and everything that was good about him seems even better now. Thaos is a fine villain and has some really good scenes here and there. But he strays just a little too close to the most iconic baddie in this fantasy RPG niche and get lost in his shadow. It also doesn't help that most of his villainy is behind the scenes puppet master poo poo. Nothing wrong with that, but it does result in Thaos having too little screen time to really grab most players the way Irenicus did.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:48
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Vermain posted:I found his characterization interesting, but didn't find him to be compelling. A large part of this is that the consequences of his actions are either impersonal, accidental, or not explored sufficiently, and it's therefore hard to feel the appropriate level of empathy for his victims to make him feel villainous. We're told the Hollowborn crisis is bad, but you only see slivers of its impact in Gilded Vale (the gloomy atmosphere, the quest to deliver the quack tonic, Raedric's questline). You don't get anything near, say, Children of Men, where women are pushing around empty strollers and normalcy has disintegrated into apocalyptic barbarism. This is also a good point. After Gilded Vale, the Hollowborn stuff mostly crops up in passing coversation. There are several more times when you can see the crisis really loving people up, but these are all side quests. White March handles it better because the main quest and the side quests all revolve around the same major situation.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:50
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Obviously what Thaos needed was to be brought back as a companion for deadfire. Bonus points if he reincarnated as a xaurip.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:54
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The biggest difference between Thaos and the BG antagonists is that for the most part, Thaos is relatable. He's trying to prevent the chaos a world without gods would cause. It has the side effects of restoring power to Woedica and the Legacy. As well as other small catastrophes like the graveyard area of Defiance Bay. He does bad poo poo because he thinks the alternative is much worse. Sarevok and Irenicus both had very good characterizations and motivations, but were still ultimately Super Evil Dudes.
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Jun 19, 2019 15:56
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He’a relatable in the way Thanos is, you know he’s batshit insane and wrong but at least you buy that he really, genuinely believes in it.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:02
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Zane posted:it's a very contrived situation to sit in imaginary moral judgment of these enormous historical processes. especially if you're a european-american living in the western hemisphere. poe2 creates that situation through the benefit of hindsight and immense allegorical simplification. but no one in the actual analogous situation of the early modern world was capable of exercising the same moral judgment. the best lesson to come away with is that the historical circumstances people found themselves in were very complicated. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this post but it seems a bit odd to suggest we can't make moral judgements on the past. Obviously it's important to take the historical context into consideration but you can still think the Belgian Congo or whatever was bad.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:27
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Avalerion posted:He’a relatable in the way Thanos is, you know he’s batshit insane and wrong but at least you buy that he really, genuinely believes in it. I didn't watch the New Avengers stuff, but yes this description is very good. I feel that Irenicus and Sarevok know what they are doing is "wrong" but do not care because their only concern is fulfilling their goals, where-as Thaos believes that what he's doing will benefit the world in the long run, as well as keep him in his seat of power.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:28
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chaosapiant posted:I thought that part was clear though? You're hunting him because you have a question, a very important question to ask him that you recognized once your watcher ability "came online". I can't see how having some question you wanted to ask but can't remember is a good justification for cross-country chase with trespassing and mass-murder. Especially when you get your own castle to rule. The question itselfnis forgotten for a long time. You seek watcher to tell you about his condition and he says that you have to find leaden key. Because maybe you'll go insane one day, maybe not. Maybe leaden key know how to help you, if you need any help. And as I understand you turn out fine, no one helped you with your condition and you don't care about it after PoE1. You only really see Thaos doing something bad when you go deep into act 2 main quest. I dislike FNV for similar reason: for the most part of the game you do what would hero of a story do cause there's a clear villain to pursue. Following Thaos or Benny from FNV makes no sense for a sane person with a self-preservation instinct.
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Jun 19, 2019 16:55
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i do agree the courier should have probably just thanked doc mitchell and marched their rear end back to california but that's not really an interesting story POE1 I guess you've got the fire under your rear end that if you did nothing or walked away from all the trouble you'd just eventually go insane but then, I suppose you're right that that's not immediately conveyed to you at the outset
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Jun 19, 2019 16:59
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Poe1 doesn't really well your Personal Problem that well, but the crazy guy you meet under Caed Nua is supposed to be an example of what will happen to you.
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Jun 19, 2019 17:01
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