Tigranes

About time we had a proper Saemon Havarian.

Level 40 is one of those things a specific subset of players want, and it would be plain false to suggest it hurt replayability for everybody. And a lot of people liked Sawyermod (not all). Just sounds like a bunch of "i don't like it"s. Couldn't care less about Josh Sawyer or what he eats for breakfast or whether he sounds 'snobby'. All that matters is is the game, as a product of dozens of people, any good.

Maybe she can be Xan-like morose about the destruction, and moan that we are all doomed constantly.

Probably not the best use of your money to plop $20 down for a completely unknown DLC to an unreleased game, when you'll probably lose $5 or $10 at most to buy later.

2-second animation w/ sound on loop. "Hell's bells! *wretch* Hell's bells! *wretch*"

Tyranny's success or failure at combat isn't down to 4 players. They retained most of POE's systems, but basically made all of its tactical options and choices irrelevant - and it would have been even with 18 party members.

I think POE2 they've gone with Unity 5, whereas POE1 was Unity 4.

You're supposed to pause like a maniac when you play RTwP with any degree of tactical complexity and with 5 or 6 party members. Doesn't worry me as long as we have various slow/fast speed modes like in POE1.

"Oh no, what if there aren't exactly the right number of companions so that sometimes I can't take all of them in one playthrough or I have to take the same guy twice?" "Oh no, they have 7 companions and 4 sidekicks is that reallly a good number for 5 parties should it be 8 companions maybe it should be more sidekicks maybe the numbers aren't exactly right even though we get companions and sidekicks and playables oh no" "Oh no, I insist on playing games with my own pigeonholed roles of two tanks and one glass cannon and one healer and one clown and one sadomasochist and you are forcing us to not have complete parties oh no" Completely. Inconsequential. There's one, and only one, real argument against dropping to 5: that it represents a small but non-trivial decrease in tactical complexity. This is undeniable, without blowing it out of proportion. Accordingly, my opinion is proportionate to the degree of its impact: I don't think it's a particularly great idea, but I don't much mind if it helps them design everything else better.

Solo works just fine with every class in POE1, should do with 2.

It used to say "It's like New Vegas on acid", and just two spaces below "Not free roam, not a shooter, dialogue not important", etc. What an ADD sales pitch. The whole thing sounds like the rambling submission of a fan. One of the two guys at the helm is ex-FNV producer (can't remember exact role), and both of them are ex-Obsidian. So at least that part makes sense. But it sure doesn't look like they're going to raise very much.

People really don't like being forced to take certain companions. It's less annoying to be forced into solo play, but I don't really think it adds a whole lot, as opposed to having solo be an optional thing people do.

If only we could trust the President, or the highly qualified folks in his cabinet, or the experienced Republican politicians around him, to have a shred of competence, we wouldn't need an obviously broken media system to try to call it out when the moron in office calls the sky red and the sea green.

But did it make you think? Do you want to discuss it with others? Yes, and I thought her quest and the writing was very moving, and in a different way than other larger-than-life characters. What matters is the quality, not the freakishness. Carth is a stupid and boring character even though he is 'normal'.

POE consciously went for a set of more rounded characters, especially because they were written to explore one of the game's main themes - how do people of all walks of life, people with families and homes and pasts and other ordinary aspects, deal with crises of faith coming in different forms? I liked that, even though I also like a lot of the crazy freaks from other RPGs. It never hurts to have a game that does it a bit different.

A cool idea, to offer negative or positive rewards in % during combat based on your relationship status. You have a strong bromance with Eder and you receive the Got Your Back while fighting next to Eder for a small defense bonus because he is mindful to shift his shield now and then toward you for protection between attacks. In the event Eder has negative thoughts to you, perhaps a shield bash goes wrong during battle and stuns you. The problem with past examples of these mechanics is that it encourages players to game the system and just pick the +Approval option in all dialogue, while it punishes players who roleplay a coherent character - turning it even more into a mindless game of up the numbers. Tyranny tried to get around this by providing different combat bonuses based on high respect or high fear, but the issue remains that you're encouraged to look at the bar and say "I just have to insult/praise him one more time and I get the combat ability!". It would be like rewarding players with a unique item after they have sex with Aloth, or whatnot. The best dialogue moments in RPG history - Ravel, Myrkul, etc. - often involve no unnecessary gameplay bonuses or token rewards, so that both the writer and the player can focus fully on the situation, the words, the themes.

Looks like some people will get their wish! I don't see it not making 3m.

> Let's discuss the terms of your surrender.

Why is 1) a problem? If resting were only required when all party members were critical, then the game would need to be a lot more difficult or nobody would ever need to rest. There is some degree of noninteresting tedium here, yes, but that's coming from resting as a system in itself. Re. 2) seems like in difficult battles you need people standing to make that crucial action, while in easy battles it's over quick enough that you won't lose that many buckets. I'm not sure this has ever been a salient thing for me, but maybe it has for others? I'm OK with the injury system, but it's going to need to be a lot more robust than what we see in POE1. Often they're of the type that many players won't even notice.

No, they aren't. Nobody said you should install 70 different mods for the original experience, or that you have to go through all those steps to make the original playable. If you're the kind to install a lot of mods, you have to do that whether you get the originals or the EEs. You seem to be glazing over everything. To suggest that buying EE is 'simpler' than playing the original would be a misrepresentation of both my argument, and the actual facts. I've constantly said there are two distinct matters. I think Beamdog is a pointless company, but that's an opinion based on the separate and earlier judgment that their product isn't very good. What I think of Beamdog is also less relevant, even to me, than what I think of their product. I've never said people shouldn't buy a product that represents value for them just because they don't like the company. I've in fact said for a specific minority, e.g. tablet players, the EE can be a worthwhile purchase. I haven't claimed that the EEs 'diminish' the originals, either. So I don't know what you are really going on about.

People are 'entitled' to play a good game, not to ruin any prospect of the game being good or coherent by demanding that they get whatever specific item or dialogue they want at whatever specific configuration. This is like saying you should let everyone have Cool Sword of Doom +3 even if they are too bad at the game to beat the boss holding it, you should be able to ride the roller-coaster upside down because you paid for it, whatever. The 'nobody would kill Eder' is an obvious joke.

Installing one or two mods that takes 10 minutes is confusing? Or are you saying my post was confusing? Because it's a post about what EE offers. It shouldn't be confusing - any halfway competent enhanced edition should be an 'obvious buy' for most people. But it isn't. It's a hodgepodge of improvements that may benefit specific people like tablet players, frustrating and incompetent devolutions like the UI, and substandard forgettable 'whatever' additions like most of their content. "Opens it up to a much younger audience"? That's true from a marketing point of view. From a consumer's point of view, wondering what is the best version of the game, that has nothing to do with anything. Or do you mean in terms of the genre as a whole? I don't see how it helps to have a studio that has raked in cash from three separate releases without really showing they are competent enough to make a good RPG - the spotlight should go to people who actually make good games and work hard for their publicity.

For everyone else, since Bart has already made his decision; get the original, hands. down. It takes 10 minutes to learn how to apply a WeiDu mod, and then it's totally up to you whether you just use the widescreen & widescreen UI mods, or you go with 7 or 70 different mods. If you like customising your experience you have the total collection of available modifications, and if you just like playing the original experience then this is the original experience - with ten years of bugfixes and modern resolutions. Alternatively you could pay twice the money for an 'Enhanced' edition which comes packaged with an uglier UI and a few pieces of poor quality content - added by a combination of a few actual veteran devs/mods and others who had nothing to do with making BG a good game in the first place. And then you will not be guaranteed as extensive mod compatibility. Now, it's not a broken game, or a game that they butchered all over the place. Once you ignore their stupid new UI, and a few other limitations, it's much the same experience as the original games. Which raises the question: why does this exist? Why do you need to pay double price for it? Why bother? (I'm not as familiar with how the modders are adapting to the new EE environment and whether there are actually quality mods that take advantage of the stuff numbers mentions, so maybe when that actually delivers, EE becomes a worthwhile purchase. We'll see if it happens. I'm pretty OK with what the last 10 years of modding achieved.) --- It's a separate discussion re. Beamdog's business strategy - I wouldn't say don't buy a product that is good value for the player just because the company is dislikeable. In fact, they're not even dislikeable, I just find their existence pointless. Years in business, all they've done is rake in far more money than their work deserves because they got to score a great game to 'remaster', while the actual work they've done with these games is either 'meh' or 'awful'. The "Enhanced" editions aren't enhanced - they don't sport anything near a general across-the-board set of improvements that benefit all users. They are nice for people who want to play on tablets without fuss, or people who for some mysterious reason refuse to spend 10 minutes installing a simple mod, or, I don't know, people who think the ability to zoom in blurrily on painted backgrounds is so great they'll pay for it. For everyone else, it's not a 'bad' product (at least, not after they fixed all the bugs they relaunched a 10 year old game with) - it's a pointless product by a pointless company.

If you want to enjoy your one playthrough, then stop obsessing about content you missed or different endings you could have gotten if you only did x or y. For you, it doesn't matter if someone else in the universe is getting a different ending or if the developers coded in reactive responses. All that matters is, was your one playthrough fun, and did it seem like a complete experience? I don't see anything to suggest that wasn't the case in POE, or in The Witcher 2, or any of the other RPGs with clear nonlinear segments (actually POE isn't very nonlinear at all). Everything else is just a case of FOMO, a completionist desire to do everything and get every point, and/or your wish to get all your choices 'exactly perfect'. None of those things are really the developer or game's problem, because addressing them would require letting down many other players. -- As for the relatively distinct problem of whether players get enough information to make meaningful choices, that's a fair one to raise, where the question is how you draw the line. For the Robin Hood example you raise, though, I'd be perfectly fine with that if I felt like the outcome makes sense. I don't play games to roleplay a deus ex machina man who fixes everyone's problems and prescribes exactly the outcome I want for every part of the story. That would be meaningless for me, personally.

You don't necessarily get more tactical decisions when you give the player more tools. When the player can choose from all the tools, it can remove tactical thinking, because you're much more likely to always pick the right tool for the job. Really interesting situations happen when you have one lay on hands left and two allies at critical health, when you realise you didn't memorise that important spell and now you have to figure out how to use the other stuff you've brought to achieve an unlikely outcome.