Chairchucker

Personally I think the opposite is true. I've played RPGs where the role of every character was to do as much damage as feasible in subtly different ways, and tactically it was very much a case of "whoever's closest go over there and beat this man severely" or "everyone dogpile the fragile looking chap at the back." Characters who are more effective when I'm not ordering them to cave someone's skull in might cause me to do something other than 'select all, attack target.'

Weird, or way more manly and awesome? (It's the second one.)

Can all races grow beards? In previous games I've had to restrict my character choices (when making male characters) to those that had beard options. It would open up a lot of playing options for me if all races were genetically capable of bearding up.

Agree with the OP, the devs should definitely have pitched us a game based partially on the very premise that it would be an isometric game, and then when that Kickstarter pitch was wildly successful should've changed the fundamental design of the game to drop one of the core elements that made it appealing to backers.

Basically.

I got the impression that the sole 'point' of their existence was to enable party make ups (combinations of races and classes) that weren't necessarily possible with the NPCs available. The rest of it is something you've just made up then.

The premise behind the Wiz8 voices is exactly the same as behind the IWD voices, (or even the BG main character voices) they're just slightly more talkative.

I think it's down to which direction their hair points or something.

I'm not really into most anime, but I figure it's just another form of media. It can't be inherently 'for' adults or children, but different individual examples of anime probably can I guess. Also I have no idea what game you're even referring to, I didn't see one mentioned in the OP.

You need to reconsider what gameplay represents and let it out of the combat shaped box you're trying to cram it into. Not every game is a combat simulator, yet every game has gameplay. Adventure games have gameplay, even if the gameplay mostly involves figuring out the right conversation options or the right items to use to bypass obstacles. In PS:T, I spend a long time playing it (the game) without killing anyone. Because I am nonetheless playing the game, in that I am choosing what things my character will say and do, there is absolutely no way that what I'm experiencing isn't gameplay.

I'm not, but combat is the major (biggest) part of it. That may be true of the Icewind Dales, but that's why I believe them to have the worst gameplay of the IE games. Almost every other aspect of the game was just a flimsy pretense for "Now go slay this group of critters." The PCs had no agency as they were just ordered around to new locations to despatch everything with a red circle underneath it. Baldurs Gate 2 had large cities where you got to walk around, talking to denizens, solving quests that didn't necessarily involve butchering evildoers, it was awesome. The combat was still there, but there was also a bit of downtime from all the slaughter, which is why BG2 had, in my opinion, gameplay lightyears better than that of IWD or IWD2. PS:T was awesome as well because the gameplay consisted almost entirely of the wandering around cities and checking out weird stuff. Just a shame the combat, when it happened was awful. (Except the spell effects, they were dope.)

It's also 16 years old, political climate has changed in that time. And it's got different ratings in different countries. And none of the games that are available in shops near me that are rated R18+ have garnered any amount of controversy; they just can't be purchased by minors.

If you want players not to kill children because the ability to kill them would alter the rating of the game, then simply disincentivising it won't quite do the trick. Making it impossible within the mechanics of the game might not be quite as 'elegant' a solution, but it will actually achieve what are likely to be the actual aims in not having child killing in the game.

Are you conflating gameplay with combat? While combat is one of the major aspects of gameplay in most of the IE games, (although not PST) it certainly isn't all there is to gameplay.

You can't imagine solutions to the problem of an immortal child turning hostile and killing someone? Perhaps you haven't given it enough thought. Perhaps instead of turning hostile and attacking the character, they could turn scared and run away.

I think instead I will hire a dwarf to collapse your house on you.

Now that's just rude! You have offended my honour, sah! I demand satisfaction!

Yes, yes it is a success if it made 10 thousand dollars profit. However as you acknowledge, you made those figures up. If a company was able to continually make products that made small profits, they would continue to be commercially viable companies. That is how commerce works, if you make a profit it is good. You might mean it as a series, but since Malekith delineated specifically between the two main games in the series, perhaps it was silly to assume he meant the same. And now you're making facts up, where are you getting that it is 'widely accepted' that IWD had the best gameplay? If you're going to try to use an appeal to authority or an appeal to the masses in an argument, you could at least provide the authority, so I could criticise the use of the argument instead of just that the argument isn't even supported.

Well there's a few solutions to this that don't necessarily entail being able to kill that child!

Making a profit is the opposite of being a commercial failure. At least one of those links does clearly place Torment ahead of Baldur's Gate. The first Baldur's Gate doesn't even appear on most of these lists, which is why he said "BG is overshadowed by BG2." Torment has more critical acclaim than Baldur's Gate. The game. The game called Baldur's Gate. That's what he said. That's why BG2 and PST are still consistently showered with praise by critics and the rest of the IE games are "Oh yeah they made these other games too, they were also good I guess."

Not reading all eight pages because... seriously... I don't see what value having killable kids really adds. If it's for "BUT MY IMMERSION!!!!!" well here's a little trick I like to do: I don't try to kill any kids and then as far as I know they're exactly as vulnerable as everyone else, oorah. On the other hand, I can see downsides in terms of the rating of the game and the corresponding sales problems associated with having a higher rating that prevents some members of the population from legally purchasing this. I get the whole "BUT DON'T CENSOR YOURSELVES" thing but, is this really the thing you want to save from censorship? Child killing, really? Let's face it, Catcher in the Rye it ain't.

Sales talk http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=55 Chris Avellone explicitly states that Torment made a profit, albeit a small one. Suggests marketing is responsible for this less successful performance. Critical Acclaim (noting that Malekith explicitly stated that its acclaim, amongst IE games, trailed behind BG2) http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-greatest-games-of-all-time-planescape-torment/1100-6135401/ Gamespot thinks it's a pretty good game. http://www.gamespy.com/articles/540/540546p1.html Gamespy too. http://au.top100.ign.com/2007/ign_top_game_71.html IGN thought it was pretty good. BG2 came 43, BTW. No other IE games - IWD included - on this particular list. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/194593/features/pc-gamers-top-100-part-4/ PC Gamer called it the ninth best game ever. (Didn't check all 100 but no other IE games are in the top 25.) Seriously, doesn't take a whole lot of link hunting off of the main Wikipedia page to find that critics really liked it.

There are a few reasons Torment didn't initially do so well sales-wise; usual theories seem to suggest that it is more down to the weird looking protagonist and setting and clunky combat, moreso than the focus on non-combat resolution to problems. I have heard that word of mouth meant that it eventually didn't do too badly. The idea that introducing elements of Torment like story, dialogue and non-combat problem resolution will introduce the combat issues that also had don't make a great deal of sense. Torment is by no means the only game that had these, hell even Icewind Dale let you sneak past encounters (although it then also gave you combat XP for coming back and finishing the job, which is specifically the kind of scenario that Sawyer suggested removing combat XP would solve.) so calling non-combat resolutions to problems a 'Torment' thing is kind of underselling the other IE games.

I just want to point out that Excalibur was given to King Arthur by the Lady of the Lake, and is not the same sword he pulled from the stone. Also, the sword Arthur pulled from the stone made him king, so actually the sword was pretty inherently important, and in fact made him famous. Guess that depends on the setting. P:E is apparently a relatively low magic setting so yeah, I guess so. On the other hand, a setting like Planescape is one in which the magical and bizarre are commonplace, and you'd absolutely expect to have run of the mill magic stuff. It's all down to the bias of the reader/gamer that they'd take their baggage from reading or gaming in low magic settings into other higher magic settings.

I think explicitly rewarding the player for taking the more difficult option, as granting more experience for going into battle than for poisoning his food supply might be, is dumb. If I were playing an actual PnP RPG and I chose to go into battle with a dragon because I thought poisoning might net me, the player, more experience, I would absolutely expect the DM to: a. Slap me down for metagaming, and b. Punish me for intentionally making my character make what would be, for him, a stupid decision.