Wormerine

Nah, I will wait for the full release... meantime War of the Chosen could finish downloading already!

Well, game design is limiting. "Freedom" in a game is limited, as what you do should get a reaction, which means it has to be preplanned by a designer in the first place. Disctiptions expand Obsidian ability to tell stories without expanding budget so I will take it. Whatever freedom you have will always be within what designers have imagined. Since we're already constrained, we should be made to feel even more constrained? If it serves the story then yes. I want it to be as limiting as it needs to be. You might be looking for something else in gaming than I do of course. I never found "freedom" of Elder Scrolls engaging, as yes, you can do anything, at any point you want but none of that matters. You can go straight and climb this mountain, but will anything interesting be there, or will anyone respond to it? Not really. Going against established rules of freedom is what annoys me a lot. In Dishonored you have to walk into a trap, even though you see it coming miles away, even though it goes against the freedom the game offered you thus far (and the knowledge you and Corvo have seem to differ). However, you could say something similar happens in Thief: The Dark Project but I as the player was never in charge of choices Garret made and the choice he made fit with his character. I can't say I ever found discriptions to be limiting (let's drop the "narrator" as it is not appropriate outside scripted interactions, and at this point "game master" would be more appropriate, I think) but they added details or build atmosphere which wouldn't be possible to convey through in game means. But I also tend to create conventional characters, so if someone goes for something more... unusual (like super dumb barbarian or sociopath) it might be possible that what game tells you what your character notices it's not what he should notice. Paragraph 1: This would eliminate a sense of exploration, which I greatly enjoy. If you don't want to explore the mountain then don't explore the mountain. Stick to the story, and let the rest of us enjoy the scenery and adventure. Paragraph 2: That just sounds like poor writing. Paragraph 3: There's an expression in writing: show, don't tell. To me it means don't use exposition when exploration and experience will serve the same end. Sometimes you have to resort to written or narrated descriptions, but they aren't always the best choice. Yes. Yes. Yes. ... I am confused. Are we arguing against putting discriptions in PoE or just criticising writing? Because storytelling in PoE was far from perfect.

It's not really atheistic at all though, it only appears that way to those who associate being a theist with believing in a monotheistic creator deity. Take the Greek gods for example: they didn't create the world, they didn't create humanity and they themselves were created by others. The Eoran gods are similar, the only difference is that they were created by the kith rather than being descended (ultimately) from the sky and the earth. Moreover the fact that the Eoran gods were created by the Engwithans doesn't mean there isn't a creator deity in the Eoran universe. The existence of a creator god is no more or less likely than it is in our own world, so even if you do insist on a creator god there could be one. In fact I think the emergence of a monotheistic religion in opposition to the worship of the "false" Engwithan gods could be an interesting development for the franchise, particularly in light of the revelation that the gods were created by kith. This isn't quite accurate though. The Engwithans are said by Iovara to have found out that there was indeed 'nothing' where they believed to be gods, and thus created surrogate gods for people to not lose faith. The reason is important here, as it is not the same reason that motivated the creation of the gods in Greek mythology or other faiths. In Pillars you are only left with the atheist position in the end, because the gods are just there to conceal the nothingness that is behind. After my first playthrough of the game I was pretty curious about the possibility of there being amidst the gods we know of in the game a 'real' god that hid himself amidst the constructs (I assumed that to be Wael). However, the way Iovara and Thaos both phrase their revelations leaves no room for such ambiguities. The ending of PoE is so brilliant because it is quite a complex idea and you can look at it from many angles. We know that in PoE Gods don't exist. Or didn't exist. Not in a typical fantasy setting. They are powerful, superhuman beings.... but they are created by humans. I am glad we weren't force to make any decisions regarding Gods at the end of PoE as I really don't know what my character would do so soon after revelation. Yes, Gods are not what they were made to be. But can people do without them? We have seen good & bad of what gods can do. I don't know, Thaos did have a point.

Well, game design is limiting. "Freedom" in a game is limited, as what you do should get a reaction, which means it has to be preplanned by a designer in the first place. Disctiptions expand Obsidian ability to tell stories without expanding budget so I will take it. Whatever freedom you have will always be within what designers have imagined. Since we're already constrained, we should be made to feel even more constrained? If it serves the story then yes. I want it to be as limiting as it needs to be. You might be looking for something else in gaming than I do of course. I never found "freedom" of Elder Scrolls engaging, as yes, you can do anything, at any point you want but none of that matters. You can go straight and climb this mountain, but will anything interesting be there, or will anyone respond to it? Not really. Going against established rules of freedom is what annoys me a lot. In Dishonored you have to walk into a trap, even though you see it coming miles away, even though it goes against the freedom the game offered you thus far (and the knowledge you and Corvo have seem to differ). However, you could say something similar happens in Thief: The Dark Project but I as the player was never in charge of choices Garret made and the choice he made fit with his character. I can't say I ever found discriptions to be limiting (let's drop the "narrator" as it is not appropriate outside scripted interactions, and at this point "game master" would be more appropriate, I think) but they added details or build atmosphere which wouldn't be possible to convey through in game means. But I also tend to create conventional characters, so if someone goes for something more... unusual (like super dumb barbarian or sociopath) it might be possible that what game tells you what your character notices it's not what he should notice.

Well, game design is limiting. "Freedom" in a game is limited, as what you do should get a reaction, which means it has to be preplanned by a designer in the first place. Disctiptions expand Obsidian ability to tell stories without expanding budget so I will take it. Whatever freedom you have will always be within what designers have imagined.

It is has been stated many times that PoE was to wordy. I remember reading interview with the lead writer on PoE and he addmitted they had little time to revisit what they have written. Therefore the writing while good, isn't nearly as tight as it could have been. Hopefully, PoE2 will get more time and polish. As far as the discription goes I much prefer it being there. But it might be because I do like reading. I always treated those games very much like an immersive book.

Not something I need as not everything is voiceacted. I feel like Voiceacting was mostly used in Pillars to give characters personality and better represent important story bits. Discriptions don't really do that. I do know, the issue you had and it was tied to the way text was written, not that the narration wasn't voice acted. In base PoE they used voiced characters and non voiced narration at the same time. It was odd as what you heard wasn't what you read. Josh mentioned that this issue was pointed out by Avallone but it was way to close to release to rewrite the game. Notice that this issue didn't appear in White March. It's confirmed that they won't mix those two together in PoE2 either. Should be fine.

If you will be getting your hands on with it, I would be very interested in hearing your opinion. I am going to stick on PC but it makes me incredibly happy to see genres I am enjoying (strategy, RPG) get "translated" for consoles. More players hopefully means more games!

Oh no... Did you play ADOM by any chance? That game had rust. Both from rust monster and when you swam or were a target of a water attack you had a chance to get rust on your weapon, which if not fixed would cause it to break. It seems PoE2 moves toward unique weapons (from what I understand you can enhaced basic properties, but you want be creating whatever weapon you want from scratch) so without a way to farm for those it might not be a great idea to destroy them.

Badly written romances? Bugs? Walking animation?

It should be a ranger's pet.

The early bird DLC pass was added as an add on due to popular demand during the campaign. As mentioned before it is not part of any particular tier.

Any changes to phrases themselves? It seems odd how using higher-level phrases penalizes you invocation-wise because they take longer. Maybe it's supposed to be some kind of balancing act, and I don't know what can be done about it while keeping low-level phrases relevant, but it's odd. Yeah, I thought it was very much a balancing act. I would have multiple songs set up, some consisting of low level songs to rank up phrases quickly. That said I rarely used them. It seemed much more effective to leave higher level ones and keep chanter as a "passive" hero.

Good to know. While I did like the chanter class a lot I also rarely used their spells. Combat would often be over or would be in "clean up" stage before I would get to 3rd phrase.

I don't believe that changing "running" animation to "walking" would change much gameplaywise. It's more of a casual jog, looking more natural than "Benny HIll walk" but not fast enough to actually impact gameplay. It just would be a different animation. Creating stamina for running or making it a trait is an interesting idea, but that would mean rethinking how combat works. I am not agaist that, but just saying... (overall moving away from stat based combat, to more impactful, visible abilities would be an improvement - that is very much an advantage of digital medium over tabletop one - but thats a discussion for another time.) Running doesn't make combat more messy. And I could have used slow mode in IE game as well. The benefit of the slowmode is that you can limit about of pauses you do, while in old game I would press space every half a second or so. Which is still a case in PoE in more complex fights. But that's a downside of translating turn-stat-based combat into real time.

That's true, old IE had one speed of movement (just like PoE) but they did use walking animation instead of a running one. Fast forward option in PoE is very welcome addition. In my mind both systems are identical. It's just in PoE they used different animation. I wasn't bothered by walking and I am not bothered by running. Both look equally good to me and represent my character moving from point A to point B on abstract isometric representation of a location. Ability to speed up and slow down process where needed is a great addition. Just some people really don't like to see running animation in certain environments.

Simply adding a button to the UI that toggles between a walk and run animation (assuming there are walk animations for all party members) probably wouldn't take long. Checking all the possible interactions that button might have for bugs will take a lot lonBet People wanna get immersed into these worlds.I wonder how much people will have bitched if Skyrim shipped with no walk animations due to Howard deeming it not necessary. wait.... Immersion in Bethesda game? haha... hahaha... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

While I am not sure I agree with the verbiage undeadlegacy used, I agree with the sentiment. This speaks of someone wanting to force their real world issues and politics, in a fantasy RPG. This is a fantasy RPG, it does not require real world gender politics, certainly not in the tokenist "just do it to appease my niche" way the OP is suggesting. Like Fluffle said, if Obsidian is not going to make it a real issue in Eora, and dedicate actual writing/quests to exploring it, then just slapping it in there to appease some real world niche is not appropriate. It would just cause most players who even notice it at character creation to go "huh?" and be taken out of the game. Or you could just go with Saints Row 2 way and make "sex" a slider rather than multiple choice.

I loved those loading screens. They had their use. They reminded me to eat. One could say that loading screens saved my life from hunger and dehydration.

Not comparable though. Helmets are one 3D model, and then the head itself is another 3D model, with the hair being yet another 3D model, and then you have to blend all three of those together. The clipping occurs naturally if you don't have conditions set right, in a perfect world. But you're going to have to code all those variables. Same with swords clipping through capes in pretty much every game out there. No one enjoys coding the sword to not clip and rely on the cape. Or it's been tried and it just doesn't work or looks too weird. The point is.... NPC's start running in reaction when Aloth casts the spell, but they walk normally. Which means that NPC's can both walk and run with no problem, the animation exists. I believe even the Main Character the Companions can Walk, because the Actors (terminology? termonology?) are probably the same. I also seem to recalling your characters walking during some Scenes (Short cut-scenes leading up to dialogue or "some event"). Can't remember exactly though. Or that Adventuring Party that walks past you when you first meet them in Defiance Bay, but when you fight them they run. Sure, there are walking animations in both PoE and PoE2. In Deadfire it seems that NPC are able to walk, so it is possible that walking as a mechanic is functional and it just needs to be added to PC character. I am not sure if it existed in that way in PoE. I don't recall seeing anyone "walk" during gameplay. They were in cutscenes but we don't know how cutscenes were programmed. I remember reading interview with CD Project Red where they described how during development of Witcher1 they were creating things in cutscenes, which weren't properly implimented in the game by a sheer creativity and work time. I remember Obsidian mentioning that each "cutscene" in PoE took large amount of work. I assume it wasn't as simple as programing "character X walks from point A to point B." The usual disclaimer - my programing knowledge is unexistent. I played around with HTML but that's about it. However, even simple changes seem to break games in unexpected ways. It the feature is as simple to impliment as people suggest, I would be shocked if Obsidian wouldn't impliment it as there is clearly a demand for it. I do not know though, what kind of dark magic is happening under PoE hood to make characters move.

I just put it on my ssd and loaded it amazingly fast, everyone should have an ssd :D Ha! True, but not everyone has SSD.

Overall, I agree. It seems Obsidian has similar stance as they confirmed walking toggle is on their to do list though it is a low prioriy one. Would be nice, and will do it if we can, but there are other things we want to do first. Did PoE1 has such big issues? I jumped into it around release of WM part1 so it was working just fine by then. I heard it had smooth launch though it might have been put against other Obsidian games which are known to be troublesome.

You might like Pyre then:-)

Huh, I wonder why it's sabre in Pillars then. Considering that USA is a young country sabre might feel more "historic." Also Brits spelling are usually more fun. I simply would like much more Dishonored if it had "u". I don't know why. Dishonoured just looks more honourable to me.

Nah, just one person treated replies like "something I don't care much about" and "I would rather see Obsidian spend time elsewhere" as an assault on his preference and request, and some people like myself were foolish enough not to ignore him. The funny thing is, I don't think there is anyone who is against the feature.