Humanoid

Broadly in support, provided 2D portraits fit the style of the game. I imagine that portraits as such would be no issue at all unless the manner they choose to do the 3D characters shows up too much difference. The other potential issue I guess is that the full-length images, as opposed to headshots, might not fit in as well as they did the IE games since I'd be assuming the new engine would be showing much more specific armour detail than the IE games did. EDIT: That said, a possible approach would be to have variants of each work to broadly cover the range of available gearsets - the same head in subtly different poses depicting three to five different levels of armour.

Legends tend to overshadow what's going on. I mean who are we talking about here? Andy Hollis? Richard Garriott? Sid Meier? I kid, but it shouldn't be hard to see how bizarre that sounds. That said, something relatively minor like commissioned character portraits could be fun.

I'm less worried about the extent to which "extreme" options are implemented as much as the balance issue of character power which tends to inflate the value of being a kind soul - it's somewhat backwards after all that the samaritan almost inevitably ends up with more riches and power than the selfish bastard, because of the meta-game concept of sidequest rewards. The question posed as an example would be something like the usual "please save my kitten" quest - my mean-spirited jerk would naturally tend to respond along the lines of "solve your own problems, kid" instead of something ridiculous like setting fire to the tree. But how do you assign both material and XP rewards to this kind of decision point without the entirety of the game ending up lopsided in the value of the virtuous? In general, I'm of the belief that the impact of sidequests in the average RPG could do with some big cuts - make them into opportunities that help define a character without necessarily having to provide a tangible reward for them.

If you squint, at least there's the upside of them not retrofitting romances to the existing NPCs...

Would be fun to be the first adventurers in a thousand years to meet the mysterious dwarves, only to find that they are just that, short humans. Not just to the extent of, say, the pygmies, but more along the lines of a tribe of labradors discovering the existence of chihuahuas.

While not a must for me, it's something that would go well with a solo run, if such a beast is a supported playstyle - which I very much hope it is.

Split is generally between the RPGs and the adventures - personally have done so far: Eternity - large pledge (of course) Wasteland 2 - large pledge Shadowrun Returns - moderate pledge The Banner Saga - minor pledge Dead State - minor pledge Expedition: Conquistador - minor pledge Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road studio - large pledge Broken Sword 5 - large pledge Tex Murphy: Project Fedora - minor pledge Spaceventure (Space Quest) - minor pledge Leisure Suit Larry remake - minor pledge To my eternal regret, I missed out on making a pledge to Tim Schafer's Double Fine adventure as I was flip-flopping too much over this new fangled Kickstarter thing in the beginning. Upcoming is Lori and Corey Cole's (of Quest for Glory fame) new project

I say go for the sequel immediately with the same tech. Sure an expansion that adds, what, 25% more to the game may be interesting when there's commercial pressure to make the official sequel sexier and shinier, but in the absence of that, why not go for 100% more off the bat?

Setting up a back-end for online purchases, both in terms of the transaction system and the downloads, when all you have is one product might not be worth it. (I imagine they'd struggle to get permission to sell their past published games) I have no idea about the real figures in such an endeavour would be like, granted.

At the game's expected technology level, the most I'd expect are travellers cheques.

User IDs in this thread - 31, 89, 144, 275, 501, 534, 535, 843, 3491, 5618, 18413, 26150, 26544 (darn young'uns).

Obviously the fairest compromise for everyone would be to do the whole game in Esperanto.

Have to say that of my concerns for the project, the biggest one is probably this kind of scope creep. My admittedly selfish desire is for something a lot more low-key and less epic, at least for the first instalment of this IP, with very real limits to the extent of wealth and power the player can attain. No massive political influence, no earth-shattering power, no riches beyond the average middle-class merchant's dreams.

Publisher pressure isn't an issue sure, but financial pressure, and to an extent, backer pressure in terms of PR and the fate of future projects, are still very real constraints. Kickstarter isn't the opposite of good project management, and if anyone is complacent enough to forget the basics of developmental discipline, then they will fail as hard as any other.

Might depends on how much the game breaks down the armour slot in terms of separate pieces of just having one unified 'suit'. Bennett's chainmail vest shouldn't affect mobility overly much.

I'm not old! I'm just, er, temporally challenged.

I could see a figure approaching that, if you were to include long-term Paypal pledges: that is, assuming the scenario that contributions will continue to be accepted over the next year. Say it finally closed six months out from release date - i.e. late 2013 - I can see a fair chunk of people "pledging" then as an effective pre-order for a game that should be then be a pretty known quantity.

Need to keep in mind that if these characters we'll be playing will be part of an ongoing series, it'd be best if we don't hit the heights of material wealth just yet. Certainly no lord of the realm stuff with dominion over throngs of serfs. Personally I'd stick to middle class digs with my character.

It was pointed out somewhere else here that it's just the fancy edging obscuring the full text - it's "drowned tombs" as confirmed by Josh.

In an immediate sense, VA is just a matter of trading a large cost for a possible immersion benefit, but that's not a thing I'm really worried about either way. My concerns would be more about implications for the future should the developers wish to expand on content - in this scenario what full VA tends to do is to "show the seams" so to speak, where the addon stuff meets the original content. Even Bioware with there vastly larger budget suffered from this, for example, in ME2, where the two DLC characters had minimal interaction with any existing aspects of the game and were restricted to self-contained comments, because of the practical difficulties in retrofitting any interaction hooks to include this new element. Doing it in pure text would be a relative doddle.

For once I want a myth or legend in a video game to turn out to be false.

I liked the idea, as tried in DA:O, of merging the wizard and the cleric classes, and instead adding the options for diversity to be choices within that class. All the greater shame then that for whatever reason, there needed to be two physical fighting classes. But anyway, my take: Fighter Magic-user Diplomat Tradesman Academic Where's the rogue you might ask? Personally I think the concept of the rogue tends to get split down the middle, the light fighter on one side and the non-fighting sneaky dude on the other. I think that between the fighter and the diplomat, provided enough customisation within each, cover for either archetype.

Thinking about it more, I'd go a step further and eliminate the concept of weight altogether. Instead implement some broad restriction on the bulky stuff you can carry: armour is always worn (had a discussion yesterday in making armour a non-item), and a character can carry a primary and backup weapon at most (Witcher 1 sort of did this). The idea then is that no restrictions need to be placed on managing the weight of various little knickknacks. No more shuffling stuff around just so you can pick up that little potion without getting encumbered. It's something worth experimenting with at any rate, though if it turns out to be an unfun mess I'll be the first to recant.

Yeah, I'd have to echo the sentiment that the middling goals aren't particularly inspiring, but they are at regularly spaced intervals such that hitting them is hardly going to be a big endeavour. Hopefully the new races and classes won't be something they've just bolted on and are at least previously-established designs that may have originally been planned to be non-playable ones. The worst case would be a case of adding a new exotic race with minimal context and making the corresponding companion at that goal level a token character which ends up the only member of that race you see in the world. As in "Hey, you can now play as a Tiger-man! Tiger-men are a race from the very distant south and are never seen in these lands. Oh, except for this cool new Tiger-man NPC we've added to show you how cool they are!" Yeah, that's extreme hyperbole and I don't expect it'll be anywhere near that jarring (unless Bethesda are contracted to implement it), but something vaguely like this is a real concern for me.

name job bye It's not something I feel strongly about in general, but I'd be a bit concerned about it diluting the quality of the dialogue in a game that I expect to be heavily based on it. A keyword system is functional enough in a context where NPCs can be a bit like bulletin boards - Morrowind for example - but having those bulletin board type responses would be jarring in a game like Torment, where you'd have the elegant, flowing "regular" dialogue then a totally out of context rote Q&A session.