lobotomy42

More information about the game, especially depth of NPC conversation and companion options. George Ziets.

One of my favorite ideas first appeared (AFAIK) in Neverwinter Nights 2: the "other" party of heroes. In NWN2, once you got a keep, a band of adventurers would start appearing and asking for work. If you wanted to mess with them, you could send them out on made-up quests and watch them get all beat-up. In NWN2 it was largely a joke, but what if it weren't? Imagine showing up in a town and discovering that there were another group of heroes accomplishing similar things as you: "Hi there, I'm new in town! Have any work?" "Funny you should ask! Until yesterday, my basement was full of rats. But just yesterday, this lovely group of heroes showed up and cleared them out. Wasn't that nice of them?" This could become a game mechanic: grabbing and completing quests before the "other" group gets to them. Eventually you could deal the party by recruiting some of them, killing them, convincing them to go home, tricking them into taking lousy quests, or just letting them be and continue to watch them snatch up your quests. Perhaps you could even manipulate them into doing all the hard work and then you and your party could swoop in to claim the rewards and credit.

Whoops, posted in the wrong thread. Deleted!

Lizard-people Mole-people Talking Bears or Bear-people Little Green Men Ghosts! A "Slime" type thing (like you fight in Dragon Quest) An animated suit of armor

I would immediately double my pledge for Ziets!

This. If there are going to be romances - i.e. if the PC is going to go around looking for the "flirty" dialogue option - than it only makes sense that the PC will mis-read other characters and screw-up.

I'm betting on an original fantasy project of some sort.

So...no new Obsidian news, beyond South Park, right?

Less than an hour to go - if you're thinking of pledging, better do it now!

Hooray!

No worries, I didn't mean to snap. Maybe I'm just a little on edge...I really want this kickstarter to do well!

Sad! Mask of the Betrayer was far, far away my favorite Obsidian product. Dungeon Siege III was also pretty fun. I hope you're still making games somewhere!

Dude, it's been over ten years since she worked at Sierra -- people age. And that has nothing to do with her abilities as a game designer.

The experience of Dragon Age 2 for me was this: I would walk into an area, and accept a few quests. Then I would exit to the "world map" and see a whole host of locations, each with indications of quest names underneath them. So I would pick one and walk around and suddenly people would start talking to me. Sometimes these were new quests, sometimes these were continuations of old quests, but most of the time I couldn't even tell. Every quest was so samey, in both dialogue and what you had to do ("Go to this location and kill some dudes") that I quickly lost track of what I was supposed to be doing and where. I didn't even feel like I had any control over what was happening or where I was going -- the experience was that of being shuttled around from location to location so that the game could show me its AWESOME BADASS cutscenes. All that business with "walking" and "combat" and "figuring out what to do next" streamlined away for my convenience! About halfway through, I simply realized I that had stopped following the plot and, more the point, didn't even care enough to try to pick it back up again. And the side characters were....interesting? They were original, I'll give them that, but they were not particularly *fun* to be around. The worst felt like blatant fan-service (boob pirate, angry elf that likes TO KILL, under-aged elf who goes *squee*) and the rest just felt like...boring people. I accept that the Origins NPCs were clich

Oh, and the Gabriel Knight games are all on GOG if you've never played them: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/gabriel_knight_sins_of_the_fathers http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/gabriel_knight_2_the_beast_within http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/gabriel_knight_3_blood_of_the_sacred_blood_of_the_damned

Did anyone here ever play the Gabriel Knight games back in the 90s? Jane Jensen, their designer, has a kickstarter up now: The Gabriel Knight games are really fantastic, I can't recommend them enough if you like adventure games (not an RPG, but very story-driven supernatural thrillers.) This project could really use your support, so if you're interested, do pledge and try to get others on board.

Well, whatever it is, it didn't stop the layoffs from happening, so at best it's a 10 of Diamonds up his sleeve...

Something with lots and lots of dialogue.

Gargoyles?

I am sympathetic to the "RPGs should have female protagonist options" but I think DS III's solution (four characters, two male, two female, with specific classes) is a pretty reasonable solution. This was a much bigger deal in Alpha Protocol, IMHO. (Which was also not helped by the fact that the main character was a huge tool.)

If the rest of the game is anything like the first eight hours, then... Dragon Age 2 is the worst RPG I have ever played and probably a contender for the worst *game* I have ever played.

Isn't that, uh, what Neverwinter Nights 2 did? Also the "Tales of" series

That looks great.

I like how everyone in this thread takes every minor throwaway line Nathaniel utters about technical features and implementations as some sort of fundamental reinterpretation of the game design.

There has been some discussion of Alpha Protocol on the Idle Thumbs podcast lately: http://idlethumbs.net/archive (#9 and #10, specifically)