Wormerine

Yeah, a lot of reactions in BG2 were initiated by companions themselves, without input from the player. That way they felt like they talked to you and acted on their own volition. The later iterations on the system usualy waits for player to initate reactions - whenever it is conflict or romance and companions rarely go into impactful conflict with each other. Josh’s relationship system seems to aim to restore that feel of companion agency, while adding an element of, more or less conscious, player Imput. Hopefully we will end up with organic feel of BG2 with more varied outcomes depending on our choices and party compositions - pencil me in as “intrigued”.

Fair enough. Still, with White March, Obsidian made sure you can play it without repeating main campaign. Load pre-sun in Shadow DLC and you can treat White March as seperate campaign accessible via world map:-). Luckily for me I purchased PoE between release of WM1 and 2, so I was able to enjoy the “complete” experience on my first go. I sent Josh a question via tumblr but no response. If they do a stream again, prodding them about it there might be the most effective way of squeezing something out.

Thought the same about Jumanji remarked/sequel/reboot and its swimming in money. I just don’t know anymore.

Yeah, it would be ideal for me either, though cosmetic DLC is something I am not against either. But as I was writing to Josh I realised we think of announced DLC in rather limited way - clearly expecting another White March. There are a lot of things they could do - two smaller dlc leading up to a bigger one. One small, to medium. One cosmetic, one companion expansion, one story pack. I would like the most to see 3part White March-like expansion, but at this point we just don’t know. Thanks for the tip about streams. I have skimmed through couple streams yesterday on fastforward mod while playing overwatch yesterday. That should make it easier to locate it.

So far each of the new SW films gave me exatly what I was looking for, that said they have some big flaws, which worry me in a long run. I feel like J. J. doomed the trilogy in Force Awakens - he set up a lot of things and delivered on nothing. It could be an alright thing to do - we all know it’s a trilogy, we all know there will be developments, connections, twists, so better get to building those up immediately. But it doesn’t seem he thought of trilogy as a whole, but rather set stuff up with no idea how to end them - which is stupid, like really really stupid. Now we had Rian Johnson come into the trilogy with task of continuing threads left dangling by J. J. He liked some of them and did a great job developing those. He seemed to continue some with little conviction or enthusiasm. And he through out some (or cut some in half hehehe) out of a window. We have a 2nd movie in trilogy, which is probably 1/3 longer than it needed to be, due to overload of characters and story arch, which doesn’t as much as subvert expectation, as said “**** you” to some of the previously set up reveals. And it’s coming from a guy who sees Last Jedi as 3rd best SW movie. Whatever merits/faults of the latest SW creation, as a trilogy it just doesn’t mesh. At least LJ neatly closed its arc’s giving J. J. a clean slate for the ep. 9. I am a bit worried, that if JJ won’t mess this up, he will be seen as the good guy in Disney trilogy, while in reality it is Johnson who tackled and solved many issues Force Awakens introduces (though sometimes with finesse of a bulldozer.) Looking forward to new Ant Man movie. The first one was the only Marvel flick I have enjoyed 100% way through. Might be some DNA left over by Edgar Wright though. There were some montages clearly in his style, whenever left over or emulating him, though not nearly as well done. Still, concept of Ant man seems more playful and interesting than the other dull superboyz. Trailer looks great.

ugh... I wish. What if SoonTM was refering to release date announcement? What if there is nothing left for us until April 3th? Oh, Josh, why hath thou forsanken ussss?

Choice in game (at least as far as story is concerned) is always an illusion - all possible choices are predetermened and predesigned by devs and there is a finite amount of them. As a result, the way Devs want to use them is to create maximum illusion of choice with minimum workhours required. Creating lenghty "alternative reality" choices like in Witcher2 or Tyranny in the end work poorly - sure the differences in outcomes are bigger, but don't create better illusion. The moments of making a choice which are the most rewarding are: moment of making the choice (setup) and seeing a consequence (payoff). The problem with Witcher2 and Tyranny is that while impressive, they still bring a satisfaction of a smaller branching decision, but require much more work from Devs. In addition both of those brought new issues - you need to replay Witcher 2 twice to really know the whole plot, and both storylines have some awkward moments with storypoints which work in one "reality" but dont make sense in the other. Tyranny on the other hand, is so preoccupied with responding to decision made in Act1, it doesn't have space to engage player with new choices making experience feel scripted and linear, therefore breaking the very illusion it is trying to sustain. Deadfire has much space to improve - some of big decisions lacked good setup or payoff. Joining faction was done quickly, before you could really get to know them, creating decisionmaking either unexistent - when you found yourself locked with a faction against your will - or weak, as you had to make a decision with having much to go on. Some big quests failed in delivering payoff - the court scene itself works well, but no matter if you argue for or against animancy the immediate game reaction is to erase your imput by Thaos' intervention. While game has short and long term reactivity - different behaviour of NPCs during riot and different end slide - it is not enough to make up for cancelling your trial midway through. Kind of reactivity I am hoping for can be found in White March - regular amount of choices, which game respects with predictible and unpreictible consequences, all with good setups and payoffs.

Two things: 1) the game isn’t out yet. Why so interested in DLC for a game you don’t know you like and want more content for? Unless, you know you will like it and are interested in post release content, which means what it will be doesn’t really matter beyond curiosity. 2) they might have not decided yet what DLC will 100% look like. I imagine they have an idea, but is it set in stone? I don’t know. I expect majority of team is still focused on Deadfire. Maybe some team members (art, narrative) are laying groundwork and brainstorming for DLC. I doubt they have big enough team, for people to be done. Announcing something, and then taking it back is bad. Better to stay silent until you have something concrete to announce. That’s why I am curious about the “after main game” claim. I don’t recall it and I am curious when it was said, and how it was worded(might listen to all the streams later to see if I can find it). It seems like a very specific claim to make, while all I remember was “we haven’t even thought about DLC yet” attitude during streams. After all, “early bird DLC” addon was brought thanks to popular demand, not Obsidian’s initiative. As a side note - we assume a lot. We know there will be three pieces of DLC together worth $30. However, we don’t know anything about the nature or pricing of those. Will they be equal and same style of content (3x $10 story DLC)? Will they vary (meatier Expansion, portrait or item pack, Yidwim turned into full companion etc,)? I asked Josh on tumblr but I wouldn’t hold my breath for a reply.

Tyranny was linear? Tyranny felt very constrained. Oddly the ambition to create multiple “realities” led to really constrained storytelling. All decision making was made in ACT1 and rest of the game was watching your choices play out. In act1 you made a decision which highly restrained path you want to follow and you follow it, with the only option being jumping to track 4 (chaos storyline). Tyranny is highly reactive but your decision making is happening for 1/4 of the game only, making it feel more “linear” than a more evenly spread experience.

Yes, they said this during one of the Fig streams, which is why I got the DLC. Hopefully, they didn't change their plans... Hmm... I have skimmed through all the streams and the only thing I could find in reference to DLCs is Josh acknowledging a comment that White that Wends or Naasitaq would make for cool expansion locations. I have been using transcripts for search though, so I might have missed something.

I... never used it. I found it way too annoying.

I don't recall them saying anything specific about DLC so far.

Noir is a genre, not only style. Style of Noir is borrowed from german expressionism, set in contemporary real lications of US. Noir has reoccuring themes - city/nature, hero feeling like a fish in the water, vulnerable in country, femme fatale, borders, corruption of US, moral greys etc. A lot of Neo-noir abandoned visual trapping of classic noir (drenched in sun LA of "Chinatown") and done some twists to established themes and tropes. Injurai well observed that Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" is very much a film noir at its core. However, I wouldn't use "Cyberpunk" as a representation of modern film noir - one of the key aspects and values of noir at the time of making was authenticy and relevance - current events, shot in real locations, with "real" characters, rejection of "fake holywood." Using SF setting goes agaist those ideals, even if many similarities can be observed. Genres are all abstract concepts. It's difficult to really argue for and againt without going into deep academic writing, and first defining what said genre is and what its essencial elements are, and then analyzing each movie for those elements. Still, whatever it us, I could use more of it in games. Nothing quite as sexy as old noir word play:

Hey, if they can hump through spacesuits in Mass Effect I guess they can bath in underwear in PoE. The video about Neketaka was posted in summer, while nude post is from November. Maybe they didn’t have nude models at that time? I doubt someone sculpted NPC’s ass just for fun.

You could still define your characters within the world - speaking of Divinity2 tag system was a neat idea - could be used to define ones religion or background etc. I do agree, this kind of role or identity does get lost quite often in classless RPGs or have classes anyway via use of talent trees (tyranny still feels kinda like a class system to me). It is not a must, but something to consider when designing more open system. I would be all for isometric Pillars of Eternity “spinoffs” like Icewind Dale or Planescape for IE games. Those experimented more with structure and gameplayfocus rather than core system, but a “spinoff” classless RPG could be fun.

Does "focus on deduction, deception and conversation" mean "noir"? I ask in all seriousness because I am still learning the definitions of various video game genres. If this is so, then I guess I too am a "noir" fan (and I never knew it). Combat is easily my least liked part of an RPG. “Noir” doesn’t really have a proper representation in gaming world beyond L.A Noire. It’s a Hollywood film genre, which lasted between 1940s and 1950s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir It was revived as neo-Noir by Roman Polanski with “Chinatown” in 1970s and we get some of those ever since. One of my favourite modern examples are Coen Brothers films - Fargo, Blood Simple, Man Who Wasn’t There. Some thngs like “Sin City” deeply draw aesthetic from Noir but are thematically quite different. noirs are usually detective or crime stories, therefore my mental jump into deception - whenever it would be detective digging into mystery or murderer planning and trying to get away with murder. Direct confrontetion doesn’t gel with atmosphere and themes of noir. As reference I would recommend “Maltese Falcon” the first film noir from all later films draw inspiration or “Chinatown” which takes a twist on MF formula and is simply so bloody good.

I wonder if the mention of a bathhouse was just a joke. Luminous Bathhouse is a location in Neketaka. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5HAqsnDeOIc 3:07

I would love to see Noir RPG - more focused on deduction, deception and conversations then combat. RPG can work beyond fantasy. As weird as it is, we even lack SF RPGs.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pQDydStWkgg

I am with Josh on that one - balance is quite important. I dunno, I am very much “roleplaying” kind of guy - I like to create different characters, focus on different strategies and make different choices through the game, but minmaxing dice rolls doesn’t excite me. Still, if I know something is really really good, and I am using something which is simply worse, I do feel guilty - like i am playing game badly. I still feel guilty for never making Kensai/Mage in BG2. Not something that kills game for me, but seeing a rebalance is always welcome. I agree, poorly balanced (with some reason fo course) single player game isn’t hurting as much as a multiplayer game would. But: well balanced SP game > poorly balanced SP game. So if dev is willing to go back and fix stuff that is a bit too good, in my eyes he/she only makes game better. There is a bit of disappointment, when strategies you used aren’t as valid or ridiculusly broken anymore, and that’s why Josh said he prefers to buff than nerf if he can help it.

At the same time, I wonder how different dev build is from backer beta. It lacks so much content that we know willl be in the game, that I would be surprised if what we played was barely representative of what Obsidian works on - early cut of a game, design to test stuff, rather than showcase what is to come. Still, you folks, who were part of the beta for PoE1 can judge better how much 1.0 can vary from the BB.

I appreciate GOGs commitment to make things work. Since steam introduced refunds, it is much less of a worry, but warm feeling toward GOG didn’t evaporate just yet. After all, it is thanks to GOG’s Icewind Dale2 copy that I was finally able to play it - other copies had some unsolved problem with direct draw, which made it unplayable for me for many years. I don’t have much against steam, but I tend to favour GOG when given a choice.

I think I get what you mean, though - as expected - I disagree. WM isn’t an instantly marketable pitch. It’s not tied to any major subplots of main game (or at least it doesn’t reveal itself quickly as it’s really closely tied to themes of base games) the game doesn’t promise you something super wacky like, let’s say, wonderful Witcher3 expansions. But WM1 is not a filler and there is no red herring. It’s a build up to a second part. I found Stalwart to be engaging and best realised location in the game. Yeah it was a sad place, but characters were engaging enough to care about their conflict. The quest didn’t surprise in WM2 but laid foundation for WM2. Perhaps it was a mistake in releasing them in two seperate purchases - but cutting or shortening WM1 would make the story much weaker. RPGs is as much about plot and action as it is about sense of place. Stalwart was a place with history, people and future. More so than any other community in PoE so far. But yeah, “help dying town reclaim long lost forge” doesn’t sell it well.

There was interesting bit on stream when Josh was explaining on how they decided who should return as companions. If I remember well, from the very beginning they were set on 3 returning characters. So he gathered all writers in the room and they decided that:

Yeah, but than you wouldn't have all the WM sidequests which gave life to the town! Hunting werewolf, exploring mines, helping drunk get his drink, helping/dooming orlan. You could do just main story, but it wouldn't make for a better content IMO. That's.... not how I remember NV DLC, though I didn't play it with watch in hand. Old World Blues felt fairly big. That's the one I remember liking the most. There was "survival horror" one, which was a neat idea, but didn't really work out that well.