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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
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Careful. In that specific competition I fully expect Pathfinder to win. Being in the beta myself, I'm in full agreement. It's shaping up to be the best RTwP game I've ever played (though I generally play it with a mix of RTwP for easier fights and switch on turn-based mode for major boss fights), the music is consistently sublime, and the companions have turned out to be my overall favorite cast of party members in any game I've played as well. It's probably going to have the same effect on revitalizing the RTwP scene as DOS2 did for turn-based games.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 28/04/21 03:20 PM.
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Joined: Jan 2021
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Careful. In that specific competition I fully expect Pathfinder to win. Being in the beta myself, I'm in full agreement. It's shaping up to be the best RTwP game I've ever played (though I generally play it with a mix of RTwP for easier fights and switch on turn-based mode for major boss fights), the music is consistently sublime, and the companions have turned out to be my overall favorite cast of party members in any game I've played as well. It's probably going to have the same effect on revitalizing the RTwP scene as DOS2 did for turn-based games. Sounds awesome. I had been looking at it, will probably pick it up.
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veteran
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Joined: Oct 2020
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Its suppose to rain whole next week in middle Europe ... Maybe it will cause a minor flood ... and you know what flood means for Larian. :P 
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings.  Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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veteran
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Joined: Dec 2020
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Careful. In that specific competition I fully expect Pathfinder to win. Being in the beta myself, I'm in full agreement. It's shaping up to be the best RTwP game I've ever played (though I generally play it with a mix of RTwP for easier fights and switch on turn-based mode for major boss fights), the music is consistently sublime, and the companions have turned out to be my overall favorite cast of party members in any game I've played as well. It's probably going to have the same effect on revitalizing the RTwP scene as DOS2 did for turn-based games. are the companions actually likable or at least are there a variety of them for evil/good players?
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
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are the companions actually likable or at least are there a variety of them for evil/good players? There's quite the variety of them. 11 to be exact. All with wildly different priorities, but the game's writing somehow makes it very plausible that they're all working together in a hellscape, even if they have entirely different agendas. Some companions are really deep, but it's rather subtle at it. Like the Hellknight Regill, who is probably the absolute best representation of a Lawful Evil companion I've ever seen thus far. I came into the beta thinking I would HATE him, but now he's actually one of my favorite companions. At first glance he's a typical authoritative stormtrooper, but it turns out that's not a very accurate assessment of what he actually is, for it becomes clear throughout the game that he leans way more into his pragmatic side instead of wielding his authority just for the sake of being an asshole. Even though he definitely can, he knows the value of restraint, especially when it comes to holding back to learn as much as he can from an enemy commander before he'll completely kick their ass anyway. His introduction DOES involve killing injured comrades who he would view as stragglers... But given the situation he is in, it makes sense, for staying back in an attempt to defend and save them would have resulted in some of the remaining capable fighters falling under the same fate, if not his entire regiment being lost.
The other companion I thought I would hate, Daeran, is... Well, for a lack of a better description, he's basically what Astarion would be like if he was born into a major noble house wielding massive political influence, had a super tragic event happen in his childhood that basically changed his outlook on the meaning of life forever, and yet still manages to have some sense of actual standards deep beneath all the hedonism and cynicism - more astute people will notice he does not punch down when he goes out of his way to insult people, he only ever seems to go after people with authority that he perhaps believes aren't deserving of it. (Hence why Daeran is neutral evil rather than full on chaotic evil like Astarion appears to be. And he basically starts off as being a pure healer, yet he uses his talents and his noble status to figure out what makes people tick, so to speak.) Compare him to the other noble, Camelia (in which she would be... extreme spoilers to elaborate even further), and it's pretty much night and day.
There's also Greybor, who by contrast is an Assassin, but otherwise he's actually a rather normal dwarven father making a living out of professional contract killing in order to provide for his family. Well, comparatively normal in the context of the rest of the party, at least. The rest of the party tends to make their jobs and backgrounds/characteristics a core part of their identity. Greybor stands out because he doesn't, outside of a serious sense of professionalism that comes with his job. The thing that really sets WotR's companions apart, even if they aren't as openly deep or philosophical as the likes of BG3, is that you get a good sense of what they are through very indirect means. And by that, I mean lots and lots of party banter. And they will often respond to each other, instead of only reacting to the player character. In the game's hub areas throughout the chapters, you often see the companions positioned in places that make sense given their personalities and backstories, like Sosiel painting at various locales depending on the time of day, Greybor brooding in a corner of the tavern awaiting new contracts, Seelah training new recruits, and so on. Some of their companion quests also don't actually feature anything related to violence at all (compared to something like DOS2 where you basically shanked someone every step of the way for every companion), which would be very surprising given the game's setting and overall themes. Chapter 3 of WotR in particular is pretty much 60% companion quests and 40% main quest, with one companion even getting three quests in there. Someone could literally make a very in-depth relationship chart between the WotR companions, and it would actually be a lot more complex than just pairing the companions with similar alignment. For one, make a note of which party members insult Ember, and who otherwise leave her alone or even respect her. The results are not what most people would expect if you are going off of the alignment wheel alone, and it's a very subtle way of adding depth to each companion.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 29/04/21 07:51 AM.
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Joined: Jan 2021
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Well...I'm sold.
Good luck Larian, enjoy my $70, you'll never see another penny from me
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Being in the beta myself, I'm in full agreement. It's shaping up to be the best RTwP game I've ever played (though I generally play it with a mix of RTwP for easier fights and switch on turn-based mode for major boss fights), the music is consistently sublime, and the companions have turned out to be my overall favorite cast of party members in any game I've played as well. It's probably going to have the same effect on revitalizing the RTwP scene as DOS2 did for turn-based games. Hopefully Owlcat has improved on their bugtesting, though, considering the PK release. Last year they've released the game on consoles, and it was apparently quite buggy too. I'd rather they take more time, seems like WotR was in development for a relatively short time.
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old hand
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Joined: Dec 2020
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Hopefully Owlcat has improved on their bugtesting, though, considering the PK release. Last year they've released the game on consoles, and it was apparently quite buggy too. I'd rather they take more time, seems like WotR was in development for a relatively short time. Well, they seem serious about catching bugs this time. While not much has changed between Kingmaker and WotR on the surface level, they apparently made a lot of backend changes to their coding to make it easier to prevent and fix bugs, especially in regards to how the game recognizes event flags now. There was also originally going to be one alpha testing phase and one beta testing phase, but they decided to open up a second phase for both. Phase 2 for WotR Beta actually starts next Wednesday. Now that I think about it, Alpha phase 1 actually began an entire year ago. The game's been in development since late 2019 I think. Owlcat was originally targeting June 2021 for full launch. That's clearly not happening anymore, and as good as the beta was, it got really buggy near the end of the beta build and needs a lot of extra time in the oven. I think full launch will be pushed back to end of September, which would be the 3 year anniversary of Kingmaker's launch. If not even longer than that.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 29/04/21 03:22 PM.
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old hand
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Joined: Nov 2020
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Hopefully Owlcat has improved on their bugtesting, though, considering the PK release. I hope they've hired a better copy editor; the English translation of Kingmaker was... not top tier. Yes, I'm one of the five people who care about such things. At this rate we'll get WotR before patch 5.
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Joined: Sep 2017
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Hopefully Owlcat has improved on their bugtesting, though, considering the PK release. I hope they've hired a better copy editor; the English translation of Kingmaker was... not top tier. Yes, I'm one of the five people who care about such things. At this rate we'll get WotR before patch 5. Patch 5 is looking to take longer than Patch 4 at this point. And I wonder if it will be hyped as THE BIGGEST PATCH SO FAR again. In addition to 5 classes being missing, there are also subclasses missing from existing classes. There are also abilities that NPCs and enemies have that should be enabled for PCs.
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old hand
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Joined: Dec 2020
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Patch 5 is looking to take longer than Patch 4 at this point. And I wonder if it will be hyped as THE BIGGEST PATCH SO FAR again.
In addition to 5 classes being missing, there are also subclasses missing from existing classes. There are also abilities that NPCs and enemies have that should be enabled for PCs. It's been about 2 months. Judging from the current lack of any information at all, the earliest that patch 5 may happen will probably cross the 3 month timeline, which would make it on par with patch 4 - and right into Solasta's full release window too. Now that I think about it, Larian's been pretty radio silent lately, compared to before. Could mean big things are coming in this upcoming patch.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 03/05/21 09:36 PM.
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enthusiast
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Joined: Apr 2021
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Well, if Patch 5 is bigger than patch 4, then yes it will be "the biggest patch so far". :P
I'm definitely hoping for more of the missing classes to be added.
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Joined: Oct 2020
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Well, if Patch 5 is bigger than patch 4, then yes it will be "the biggest patch so far". :P
I'm definitely hoping for more of the missing classes to be added. I don't think it will be bigger, because after 3 months we got one class. I think that again in 3 months we will get 1 class or maybe a new 1 new companion. Or we'll get an update in the summer.
I don't speak english well, but I try my best. Ty
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old hand
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Joined: Nov 2020
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There's another patch 4 hotfix being worked on, apparently, which is not good news for patch 5. If the latter was near release, I assume they'd just be rolling the former into it.
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Joined: Oct 2020
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Maybe they are strugling with some things ...
Personaly i cant quite imagine how they want to implement Paladin with this "automatic reactions" system. :-/
Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 04/05/21 08:43 AM.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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Joined: Jul 2014
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There's another patch 4 hotfix being worked on, apparently, which is not good news for patch 5. If the latter was near release, I assume they'd just be rolling the former into it. Also, given that Larian didn't even start to tease about the fifth patch, we must be at least weeks away from its release.
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Joined: Mar 2020
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are the companions actually likable or at least are there a variety of them for evil/good players? There's quite the variety of them. 11 to be exact. All with wildly different priorities, but the game's writing somehow makes it very plausible that they're all working together in a hellscape, even if they have entirely different agendas. Some companions are really deep, but it's rather subtle at it. Like the Hellknight Regill, who is probably the absolute best representation of a Lawful Evil companion I've ever seen thus far. I came into the beta thinking I would HATE him, but now he's actually one of my favorite companions. At first glance he's a typical authoritative stormtrooper, but it turns out that's not a very accurate assessment of what he actually is, for it becomes clear throughout the game that he leans way more into his pragmatic side instead of wielding his authority just for the sake of being an asshole. Even though he definitely can, he knows the value of restraint, especially when it comes to holding back to learn as much as he can from an enemy commander before he'll completely kick their ass anyway. His introduction DOES involve killing injured comrades who he would view as stragglers... But given the situation he is in, it makes sense, for staying back in an attempt to defend and save them would have resulted in some of the remaining capable fighters falling under the same fate, if not his entire regiment being lost.
The other companion I thought I would hate, Daeran, is... Well, for a lack of a better description, he's basically what Astarion would be like if he was born into a major noble house wielding massive political influence, had a super tragic event happen in his childhood that basically changed his outlook on the meaning of life forever, and yet still manages to have some sense of actual standards deep beneath all the hedonism and cynicism - more astute people will notice he does not punch down when he goes out of his way to insult people, he only ever seems to go after people with authority that he perhaps believes aren't deserving of it. (Hence why Daeran is neutral evil rather than full on chaotic evil like Astarion appears to be. And he basically starts off as being a pure healer, yet he uses his talents and his noble status to figure out what makes people tick, so to speak.) Compare him to the other noble, Camelia (in which she would be... extreme spoilers to elaborate even further), and it's pretty much night and day.
There's also Greybor, who by contrast is an Assassin, but otherwise he's actually a rather normal dwarven father making a living out of professional contract killing in order to provide for his family. Well, comparatively normal in the context of the rest of the party, at least. The rest of the party tends to make their jobs and backgrounds/characteristics a core part of their identity. Greybor stands out because he doesn't, outside of a serious sense of professionalism that comes with his job. The thing that really sets WotR's companions apart, even if they aren't as openly deep or philosophical as the likes of BG3, is that you get a good sense of what they are through very indirect means. And by that, I mean lots and lots of party banter. And they will often respond to each other, instead of only reacting to the player character. In the game's hub areas throughout the chapters, you often see the companions positioned in places that make sense given their personalities and backstories, like Sosiel painting at various locales depending on the time of day, Greybor brooding in a corner of the tavern awaiting new contracts, Seelah training new recruits, and so on. Some of their companion quests also don't actually feature anything related to violence at all (compared to something like DOS2 where you basically shanked someone every step of the way for every companion), which would be very surprising given the game's setting and overall themes. Chapter 3 of WotR in particular is pretty much 60% companion quests and 40% main quest, with one companion even getting three quests in there. Someone could literally make a very in-depth relationship chart between the WotR companions, and it would actually be a lot more complex than just pairing the companions with similar alignment. For one, make a note of which party members insult Ember, and who otherwise leave her alone or even respect her. The results are not what most people would expect if you are going off of the alignment wheel alone, and it's a very subtle way of adding depth to each companion. The companions are pretty much the only thing WotR has going for it story wise. Don't get me wrong, it's a big deal and they are the best cast I've seen in years in a RPG, but it's a shame they are stuck in such a bad story.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
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Perhaps, but I guess that’s the nature of directly adapting a tabletop module. People said the same thing about tabletop Kingmaker, and the game actually did turn out pretty decent because Owlcat filled in a ton of plot holes themselves, and now their changes are considered canon with the updated module. The companions really sell these games. Owlcat really knows how to write characters that actually feel like they’re part of the setting and legitimately care about what’s actually happening, instead of being largely self absorbed and only caring about the player. I was legitimately surprised to see that scene with Lann’s mother for one. She should be proud of her son being the most busted archer companion I’ve ever seen, a tank archer to hold off back line ambushes is a pretty novel idea. They even animated a little hug.  I hope they do Iron Gods next. I’ve only heard good things about that module.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 04/05/21 06:54 PM.
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old hand
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Joined: Jul 2009
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I hope they do Iron Gods next. I’ve only heard good things about that module. Hm, not sure if Iron Gods is mainstream enough for a video game
Many people do not like to much technology or even scifi in their fantasy
Still, it could be worse (Reign of Winter. Certainly interesting but I guess many people will dislike the strange direction it takes). I still hope for a Starfinder spinoff.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
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I hope they've hired a better copy editor; the English translation of Kingmaker was... not top tier. Yes, I'm one of the five people who care about such things.
At this rate we'll get WotR before patch 5. Funny you mention this. Beta part 2 had a big surprise for me - there are a lot more lines voice acted now. Considering WotR is several degrees larger and with way more dialogue than most cRPGs save for Kingmaker, that's a tremendous amount of effort. But the voice acting also means the writing is also set in stone, so I'd hope they are really sure about the quality of their writing this time around. Also WotR is clearly in the optimization phase as well. Beta phase 1 was a bit choppy for me. Beta phase 2 runs smooth as butter in comparison.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 06/05/21 09:33 AM.
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