Tigranes

In other words, we just assume they're all shagging each other, since who knows when they'll all die and they don't have any other friends? Sounds reasonable.

No information. Unlikely at the present.

Continue here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62215-relationshipromance-thread-iv/

This is the single consolidated location for discussion about romance and relationship vis-a-vis Project Eternity. Remember that arguing about each other's arguments and opinions is OK, personal attacks or obnoxious disruption is not. Play nice in the sandbox. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 For those new to the forum/topic, here's a few example points of discussion (but not limited to): What type of dynamic, complex character relationships are important to your gaming experience, if any? If you enjoy romances in games, what type of plots do you enjoy or dislike (tragic, happy ending, marriage/family)? What romance or relationship arcs from other games did you personally enjoy that can serve as examples? Do you have any particular, preferred game mechanics for romance/relationships that you'd like to see included (optional questlines, dialogue, cutscenes)? Most recently, Osvir has suggested a poll on romance (see above).

Hacking minigame is done most efficiently on the PC if you use keyboard for the left and mouse for the right. After a while, it gets pretty intuitive, though you need to move everything in a 'blocky' fashion (i.e. you're not gliding the cursor over to the selection, you're sort of pointing in the right direction then letting the cursor move block by block). I think it's a lot tougher to get used to if you haven't played older click-to-move titles, or other things like that. AP isn't that difficult and playing without chain shot does open up different experiences. After one playthrough ghosting or chainshotting, it's quite liberating to go gung ho with assault rifle and drop explosives everywhere.

Too many sub-forums relative to activity tends to kill activity, because it becomes really annoying to actually navigate the forums as a user. It would be a different question if these forums were a report database for the devs, e.g. a beta feedback forum.

So... you aren't actually talking about banter, but about definitions of romance, right? I'm not seeing anything here that couldn't be addressed in the Romance thread. But PM me if I'm an idiot and need it explained, happy to listen and reopen / whatever.

Wait, you mean, not actually wanting a console is not a valid option? Doesn't that make your declaration the most pretentious of all? I loved my PS1 and Nintendo is always good for having people over, but I haven't had a gamer social network offline in yoinks and I haven't seen a console game I really wanted to play in years.

Well, that's the thing. Now that we have a pie chart, people (including myself) who know either nothing or very little about the process are trying to figure out whether this is enough QA, whether they need more QA, what having QA actually means and costs, etc. etc. Personally, I know the more I overanalyse the more I'll let my own ignorance create wrong assumptions. I'm happy with seeing how there's a smaller emphasis on programming, production and even art in terms of numbers, and seeing the breakdown of roles. (I mean, I could hardly tell them to make sure they have more narrative designers than area designers, right?)

Well, they're in pre-production. You wouldn't want them to hire 10 people for QA for two years, on their budget. It's not like playing betas.

There is an ironman mode.

I'm generally sleeping 3 to 9 these days, which should be sufficient, but has me pretty dozy until the afternoon. Also, being an academic, having first world problems, etc.

I like unhappy endings. Or rather, ambivalent ones. What I'd like to see is a properlly grotesque ending (in the original sense of the word). Everyone who believed in lofty ideals and codes of honour are brought low, embarrassed and degraded, and then it all ends in a big booze-up.

The fiscal year is different from the calendar year, and for THQ, it it April-June or thereabouts.

I have yet to make my mind up about faith (and, as far as I understand it, it's not a matter of 'making your mind up' anyway), but what you say about 'predefined rules and views' is true of all human existence. Science is, according to the best historians of science and technology, about predefined rules and views of what can be counted as real or truth (or, in various cases, not actually true but considered true enough / probably true); so it is with nonreligious philosophy and ethics, from the Greeks to people like Levinas; so it is with pure down to earth, 'common sense' wisdom or way of life. Believing in the rules by which science determines what may be practically counted as probably true is a matter of choosing to see the world in a certain way, after which you use those very rules to determine what is real or true - including those rules themselves, which is why a purely scientific judgment of religion, or a purely religious judgment of science, is useful to nobody except the believers of either. Oh, and about the idea that faith, religion, God, etc. is our way of trying to make ourselves feel important or immortal; why, is that not the goal of life? My body is not under my control even as I speak, and soon enough, I shall die, no matter what I do. There are certainly deplorable forms of human hubris or dreams of immortality, but to try and make ourselves 'special' in itself - it is a worthy goal.

A worldwide network of beggar publicists, obviously.

The thing about many recent actiony-RPGs is that they lack real substance, the meat of gameplay. They're all very pretty, and there's enough fun gameplay to hold up a playthrough, but after that you realise just how hollow and shallow it quickly gets. DX:HR was very fun the first time, but the gaemplay was already wearing thin after half the first playthrough; I'm getting the vibe that Dishonoured is similar. Whereas the proof is in the pudding where games like Thief aren't necessarily more complicated but the basic mechanics hold up. It's like these days the games you play remind you all too well that you're just sitting there pressing some buttons, and heck, sometimes you might as well not press any. Whereas older games, having more in common with pre-digital games, had a good set of foundational dynamics that took on an importance in their own right, and you could easily forget it was just a series of button pressing. Anyway, everything I've heard about Dishonoured is that it's interesting has many good bits, but ends up being rather shallow, 'one fun romp' kind of deal. I'll wait for a bargain sale.

I don't know specifically what tools will be available, since that depends on what can be done with Unity 3D to begin with, what third party tools they plug in (including Obsidian's own), and how much resources they can put into mod support (though they will certainly try - wasn't it a stretch goal?). My point is that BG2 shows us prerendered backgrounds might not allow the NWN / TES style modding, there's a lot that can be done nevertheless. As someone who dabbled (like, literally, only dabbled) with mods and use them a lot, though, I have to say I wouldn't mind the tools themselves posing a bit of an entry barrier. It ensures that modding takes not really amazing technical ability per se, but a lot of persistence and determination which weeds out thoughtless or careless creations, and also ensures that modders are more actively plugged into the community; I felt that despite the relatively high barriers BG1/2 developed great communities like the Gibberling Three and you could be sure of a certain type of quality (not to mention standardized technology through WeiDU). With NWN or TES 95% of all mods are rubbish. Not to say we want to introduce artificial barriers, because those barriers aren't perfect. But prerendered backgrounds don't kill modding is my point.

There were many, many, many great mods for the BG series even though the tools were hideously mod-unfriendly. (Who remembers manually penciling the walkmeshes in the map files?) All they need to do is ensure scripts, data compilation and such things are mod-friendly. They can't do anything about the difficulty of painted backgrounds, but there can still be many great mods adding characters, gameplay, new character rules, spells, entirely new quests, etc.

Played 5 hours of AC1, the terrible, terrible unskippable cinematics about the Present + Click The Button QTE gameplay killed it and I haven't gone back since. I hear they've gotten really good at making realistic cities (AC1 was good too), but I'm going to need real gameplay and a story that has the good graces to shut up and get out of my way if it's crap. Then there was Ubisoft DRM, and the franchise was dead to me. I think they have gotten better over time and DRM has been resolved though? No?

Master Lin was even more obvious than Kreia though. Loved the "secret flaw in your technique that has no gameplay consequence or identifiable symptoms but is purely there so I can KO-you later when I turn BAD". Kreia was obvious but I was still interested in what she had to say. Choosing 'good' and 'evil' path actually became a very difficult proposition in K2.

I would, in fact, like the option to patronize as a side-feature/quest. Remember the kids you could equip with weapons in Umar Hills in BG2? Or Prism the painter in BG1? Imagine speaking to an artist down on the ropes and choosing not only how much money to give, but also what kind of advice to give him, and much later in the game, you will get to see how he has fared as a result of your advice and patronage, and you might also get an additional small quest or two opening up. Similar to the Bard stronghold in BG2, but less involved, and still fun. Real Estate has obvious implementation issues.

Krezack, you need to understand that 'saying the right thing' is not always the right way to actually effect social change. If you want to have a positive effect on those around you by persuading them to take climate change more seriously, then it's not really a great idea to say "sorry for all those who just died in the hurricane, guys this is exactly why you need to listen to me and stop being morons". If only because it makes you sound like a Christian preacher... Philadelphia was largely unaffected, so my first experience with broad proximity to a natural disaster was largely anticlimactic. It does make you realize just how helpless (and unresourceful) you can be in such situations, though; I understood that if something big were to hit, I'd probably panic first.

At Obsidian Entertainment, we believe in supporting and raising a future generation of community entertainers. If they're any good.

As Jarmo says, though, Irenicus was a villain who actually made the best of his screen time, and he was cool while you were playing the game, not when you were thinking/reading/talking about it afterwards. Loghain, now I recall more of him, was mainly a promising 'I-gonna-get-this-kingdom-up-by-the-boostraps' concept largely squandered. I'm remember right about how you kill/pardon him near the end, right? It just ended up being a Disney moment. Anyway, good VA really does make a difference. It's just that good VA is really really rare, and it's usually just expensive, bad VA. BG2 really did a surprisingly good job with VA.