Tigranes

Ultimately, I guess I'm not sure what the point is of trying to assess the 'sensibility' of PE's definition in relation to yours, since within the larger schema of various definitions of soul abound, it fits in just fine. In practice, I don't think it would confuse anyone playing, given their familiarity with fantasy settings as well. The questions of afterlife and Gods are as you say interesting, and certainly the PE definition of souls should have a knock-on effect in changing how PE individuals treat those issues. But I don't think that's a 'problem' with the definition of any sort, just an interesting question that the PE definition will allow the setting to explore. What does it mean to know in concrete terms (if they do) that they all have an afterlife, but the afterlife is not entirely 'theirs'? Does the notion of judging a person by their blood, race, or other forms of biological and material inheritance taken on a different meaning when there is a soul-inheritance going on?

Now that's something I can get behind, the first character to actually sound/look interesting at a glance. Echoes of Arcanum too.

I used your definition of the soul because I thought that would be the easiest way to communicate. If we try and go back to the basics: you already think a soul is free, independent, individual. This is why PE's description of soul seems weird or 'wrong' to you. I have no problem with an idea of a soul, as Avellone puts it, where your free will is not the entirety of your soul, where there is an inherited element too. No offense taken. I'd respond that you aren't really being 'practical and sensible', since this is a metaphysical question to begin with. You can't really say "well practically what actually make sense is my concept of the soul". If we use your definition, of course PE soul sounds weird and contradictory. But there's zero reason to use your definition, since there are many definitions of souls out there anyway and this is a fictional universe.

I've taken a few philosophy classes and one of the issues I had is that often things did not appear to be defined correctly. In the case of PE it would be better to redefine the "soul" as something else....guardian angel/spirit/ancestor guiding you to destiny and you choosing to fight said destiny, a possessing demon, a corrupting entity.....etc. There are many ways to phrase this conflict to make a lot more sense....the least of these ways as I see it is defining this outside entity as one's "soul". That's because you already have a strict definition of what a 'soul' is. So when someone gives you a different definition, you think it has to be called something else. The notion of soul is a very polysemic one, and hell, we're talking about a different and fictional universe. Besides, the way Sawyer described it, calling it a guardian spirit wouldn't make any sense, because that implies an external entity that you can independently speak with (and thus choose to silence, etc). Defining the PE soul in this way raises much more interesting questions of how much of who you are, your magical capabilities, etc is inherited, how the process of inheritance works, etc. Depending on how it's done, it could be an interesting variant of how former lives and personalities were worked into the story of the Nameless One, and the impact that had on gameplay.

There are so many different philosophical/ontological variants of body/soul that it doesn't seem strange to me. You're essentially describing a form of Cartesian dualism, and while PE souls may not make much sense within your particular schema, it doesn't need to. E.g. there are many persuasive accounts arguing it's just as unrealistic and weird to split 'biological needs' from 'mental needs', or to imagine some kind of 'autonomous soul' that isn't subject to such outside influence. There are of course many examples from all cultures and times as well, including the idea of former lives, and variations of daimon originating in Greek thought. I'm very interested in the notion that you don't have completely independent souls in the world of PE, and you can in explicit ways trace the way former lives make a mark on you as 'you' without making it as hamfisted as demonic possession or psionics (which is an external effect).

Don't we already have a Heart of Fury-like mode as one of the stretch goals, alongside Expert & Ironman?

No Obsidian / Black Isle game has ever invested a great deal of resources into rendering cinematic sex scenes and the like, so I think we're safe there. In violence, too, there might be 'mature' stuff, but it's usually not a great point of investment dev-wise.

Human enemies are often so much more fun to fight against because they bring the full range of tactical options coded for your own party, whereas monsters are often one-diimensional. I like the idea of less is more, a smaller bestiary but with each creature type presenting unique tactical challenges or dimensions in some way. Otherwise, surely at least one type of enemy must exploit the stamina/health mechanic, e.g. slow heavy-hitters that drain health exclusively.

It's one of the driving ideas behind PE that it takes a more nuanced approach to cultural differences and how they develop within the logic of the setting. Should be interesting to see that ends up. I don't really think it needs to correspond in any direct manner to PC debates or to history in order for it to be interesting or relevant.

I've linked to it in the Known Info thread, which I am unable to keep up to date at the moment. Right now the OP's Sorcerer's Place link is one of the best places to go. I expect Ausir's wiki will thrive as time goes on, also.

Autolooting means you don't notice when you pick things up, you forget where something came from, you might pick up a great magical weapon but not notice it for a while, then scratch your head. Not fun. I do think a hotkey for Loot All, or similar functionalities, are useful.

Fallout 1 cost 3 million, but a large proportion of that went to talking heads, which were technologically very challenging at the time. The IE games - I forget what the figures were, one of them had a 5 million budget. Factor in the cost reduction with technological improvement over time, but also inflation in currency, and basically, we're looking at the kind of budget that was enough to produce BG1 or FO1, but not BG2 (which remains a very unique game scope-wise).

You should also try Amazon, which has a few random copies of NWN2 and expansions. You could get MOTB for like 2 dollars at times.

Work, more work, more work.

Well worth the price of admission for the first playthrough. After that, nothing worth going back to. Closer to an Improved Oblivion than Morrowind in that aspect.

I think the vast majority of people here appreciate BG. The divergence comes with later games like DA2. Personally, I stopped playing Bioware games after DAO because I was finding them boring and trite. It's sad that they no longer make games I have an ounce of interest in, but they're already too far away from me to care so much or to spend time criticising. BG/2 were still fantastic games, obviously.

Right, all fixed. I will also remind everyone that discussing why each other's arguments are wrong is fine, but calling out 'trolls' quickly ends up being more damaging to conversation than actual trolls. Don't blow your tops.

A reconstruction of the thread about failure and its consequences in PE. Apologies for the mess.

Feminism thread merged with women thread, both of course open for discussion. Edit: Actually, I screwed that up, so let me fix...

It would be nice to have 5-6 PST-level companions then 5-6 'supporting cast' level, but I can live with 8 + Adventurer's Hall. Especially since I'd imagine each character to get a little bit of voice acting and at least one quest...

FO1/2, Arcanum, PST, IWD1/2, BG1/2 all have widescreen mods, and look just fine. Though you wouldn't want it on the natural resolution of your 32" monitor or something, you'd want to set it a bit smaller. That should set you up for a couple hundred hours of awesome.

Yes, we did, as Obsidian have said they count paypal donations. We're comfortably over 4m.

Just Expert and hard difficulty first, as I assume I'll want that for every playthrough. Then we'll see about Trial of Iron.

73,968 backers $3,986,139 pledged of $1,100,000 goal

Hopefully they don't lose too much to bad pledges. Yep. It'd be interesting to hear how other Kickstarters fared in that department. Some attrition is probably inevitable, but hopefully it's only a small percentage. Double Fine released figures to backers, from myh memory, there were indeed some bad pledges but quite small on the large scale of things. Certainly compared to Kickstarter/Amazon fees and the hundreds of thousands of dollars required to supply the merch rewards.