Tale

Fantasy is, to me, about letting the imagination run wild, so going with Tolkien or D&D seems a little constrained. I say forget popular races, go back to scratch. Find your own inspiration in mythology, folklore, history, and nature. Even borrowing from Norse myth like Tolkien, you don't have to end up at the same place. Look at Pratchett and his elves. Even wanting "humans, but different" leaves a lot of creative room beyond elves and dwarves. It's too late to win the fight on elves and dwarves, but I would like to see some new creativity with the remaining races.

I don't follow the logic. It is an isometric tactical RPG. He seems more concerned with visibility. Baldur's Gate and other IE games were typically too far back for details such as that to be valuable. The most it got is people exploding into pieces.

Don't care between one and done or NG+. NG+ is interesting, but it's never been really valuable for me. And development to make the encounters still fun in NG+ might be more effort than I pull enjoyment out of it.

Read the topic first! I will have to post on every page , cause u guys dont read! we are talking about death animations and a little 2 sec animation to finish blow no finishin actions chain, no buttons sequences!! cmon are u guys that dumb? or just trolling? Where did he say anything about chains or button sequences?

I have two favorite class of antagonists. 1) Friend on the other side. He's not necessarily evil. Maybe he's just fighting for his own country. Maybe he's a well-intentioned extremist. Maybe he's gone complete bonkers. But the main character and him have a shared history and respect. This only really works if this actually plays out in the fight. If they just kill each other with nary a word, no conflict or resolution over their history, then it loses its value. This is part of why Darth Vader was interesting in Star Wars, though has been repeated in quite a few other works like Suikoden or Xenogears. It's probably a lot harder to do in more open RPGs where you can create your own background. However, it's still a great opportunity for combining the action and drama. 2) Well-intentioned extremist. We're probably all familiar with this. The guy who believes in making the world better or helping people but goes a little too far. Maybe his ideals got corrupted. Maybe he recognizes his ideal needs to get dirty. But whatever it is, he's out for something better than himself. And this also provides an interest drama because you're dealing with a man who genuinely believes in what he is fighting for. And the subtext of conflict can be about proving his methods wrong or breaking his belief. Okay, maybe the thread is titled "love to hate" and these aren't guys you hate. I don't really love hating my antagonists. But these are the guys I remember. Let me give this another try. Let me think. Joker? Irenicus? Sephiroth? M. Bison? I don't know. Any Schmoe can kill the hero's girlfriend and act like it's not a big deal. I think it becomes more about how the hero reacts to them, how it solidifies or changes their journey, that's interesting here. The Joker in The Dark Knight basically cut Bruce Wayne off from considering a life as anything other than Batman. Sephiroth is the reason Cloud and went through all that trouble, and Cloud reaffirmed that it was for the ones they lost towards that final fight. Bison killed Chun-Li's father and while "but for me it was Tuesday" will be a phrase long remembered beyond an otherwise terrible movie, you can see how Chun-Li was dedicated to crime fighting because of it. Irenicus tortured, or worse, Imoen. A good villain motivates the hero. But for me, I think it's the hero's response that's more memorable. I wouldn't care about the Joker if Batman didn't play off against him. If he was a Punisher villain, would anyone care? The Joker is Batman's conflict. Batman's struggle with his policy not to kill. Batman dealing with how the Joker has tormented, maimed, and killed Batman's friends and how Batman maybe blames himself for that. It's not the villain I particularly see myself caring about here. It's the device he brings to the plot. And how meaningful that device is depends entirely on how it interacts with and how the hero plays off it. Magog has the same kind of role in Kingdom Come. And he's not a villain. But what the idolization of him does to Superman is just as meaningful to me as what Joker does to Batman. Perhaps more meaningful, because he did something nobody else could do. He made Superman give up. So I'll go with what. What makes a villain I love to hate? A villain that forces the hero to grow.

The thing that worries me about the Doctors leaving is that Muzyka would talk about "possibility space." I love it, it's what an RPG should aspire to. And it's also my only solid complaint about the last two titles. Yeah, there's some pretty weak points in the writing beyond player choice. But choice is the big one. I could gleefully ignore the rest if choice was satisfactory. Without him, I hope someone's still pushing for it. Allan, will you take up the torch?

Narrative tutorials bother me. Move it to a whole other menu item and be done with it. This solves my biggest two concerns. 1) You don't have to tie narrative sequences to boring gameplay. There isn't a fun tutorial in existence. The best tutorials are merely tolerable. 2) Players who take a break don't need to restart the game to get a refresher on mechanics.

If the software can't emote, it's no replacement for an actor. People aren't going to be satisfied having the lines read to them. They can do that part themselves.

We have a rule against threads over 500 posts long. Don't worry, I've started up a new one. Part 2

Copied from previous thread: Hello everybody, among the fine folks in the kickstarter comments we discussed a possibility to help Obsidian increase the funding of the game a little bit. We actually talked about an idea that showed up earlier on Kickstarter during the funding of the adventure game Leisure Suite Larry and became a tradition for adventure kickstarters (Want the whole story? Check this). We think this a great idea and we know, Obsidian fans are some of the most passionate gamers in the world. So we decided to start THE OBSIDIAN ORDER OF ETERNITY. How do I become a member? Actually, it's quite simple: Upgrade your pledge by 8 $ and you're in. Yes, it's really that simple. You don't have to pass a test, you don't have to choose a specific tier. The Obsidian Order is open to everyone as long as s/he adds this small fee of 8 $. If you've done so simply expand your Kickstarter-Username with "- Obsidian Order" and start commenting on Kickstarter. Proudly demonstrate your membership to this very special order of the most devoted Obsidian fans and help spreading the word about our movement among all backers of Project Eternity! Why exactly 8 $? Because 8 stands for Eternity. What do you get in return? The feeling of being a special fan amongst some already extraordinary people. Yes, it's a matter of fandom, passion and love. There is no physical or digital reward in it. Don't feel impelled to do so, this is just our way to demonstrate our love for that kind of CRPGs. Some additional words Backers of the 10.000 $ tier who are technically inable to increase their pledge are honorary members from the beginning, because they've already beaten the system. You guys really got it. So, no reason to feel sad, Notch. So now, who stands with us? Farudan, Caretaker of the Obsidian Order http://northharbour....der-of-eternity

I think we could probably get something on the same scope as Planescape, one of the Icewind Dales, Fallout, or Arcanum. The companion cast seems to be pretty small for Baldur's Gate. They can cut out some overhead, if they keep their design focused and don't have to deal with a publisher making feature requests mid-development, I think it'll come out pretty close. There will probably be smaller spell and monster lists than the D&D games.

I'm playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and I chuckle everytime the subtitles say my character's name. Because they are lying.

I think there's a consensus that Desmond never left the facility, has been permanently attached to the animus and his story is just a fabricated lie. And if that's not canon it should be. Seriously how does the guy with the coolest ancestors end up being that. A nomadic bartender? Honestly, that sounds like a step up!

Subtlety get me nowhere, I'm learning. It seems nobody has any interest in discussing romances anymore and wants to instead discuss mortality rates of wartime vs the inner city. An interesting enough discussion for its own thread in way off-topic, not quite the point here. I'm closing the thread. When people have new things to add on the possibility of romances in Project-Eternity, they can create a new one.

I don't know why it would be surprising. It seems to be widely known that voicework has caused a massive decrease in dialogue choices. And more dialogue or more choice in general is one of the most common requests in RPGs today.

Not a big fan. It tends to become a resource sink more than anything tactical. In Oblivion/Morrwind it was a gold sink or, more commonly, a skill sink where you carried around a bag of hammers. Sadly, they would not let you use this bag of hammers as your weapon. It served similar functions in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. The ONE interesting consequence it had was in Fallout 3 and New Vegas where it encouraged people to stick to weapons that were popular in the dungeon they were visiting instead of just using their favorite gun. This fell by the wayside later on when people tended to have built giant stockpiles. But I don't see them replicating that part of the system here anyway.

I hope they recognize the need for a good editor. Even the best writers need one.

Is it just me or does Edair look really bored? Sort of like he's thinking "uh... can I go yet? No? Okay. :("

I sincerely doubt it will be quest XP. Probably more like challenge XP. A puzzle will give XP whether you solve it or cut the knot. A random encounter will give XP, regardless of whether you talk, fight, or flee. A dungeon will give XP past chokepoints like floor transitions. That kind of thing. Good thing about that design is that you can still give XP for a dungeon with a quest attached even if they don't have the quest. That is if they keep to the equality idea regardless of approach.

Hey, it might give me a chance to play through those 200gb of games that I've bought and downloaded, yet haven't played yet I'm finally making leeway on my third full NWN2 playthrough. And Icewind Dale might get completed this year!

http://www.vg247.com/2012/09/21/project_eternity_kickstarter_obsidian_entertainment_interview/

"Standard" may have been the wrong word. However, they're a common enough enemy type in D&D that they made their way into both Baldur's Gate II and Neverwinter Nights 2, they're a Druid kit, an enemy type and player race in World of Warcraft, have made 2 separate appearances in Elder Scrolls games, and are a major facet of World of Darkness, which then saw an appearance in in Bloodlines, if not Redemption (I haven't made an in-depth effort at Redemption). And beyond RPGs, they have a massive cultural impact including in modern fiction, being part of two popular fantasy novel franchises that then were made into movie franchises in the past 10 years, as well as yet another movie franchise not directly originating in other media. They're not precisely an honest attempt at original creativity in a fantastic context, or even part of the shallow end of exposure for unoriginal creation, at this point in time. Tieflings/Aasimar/Godlike have less exposure than they.

Just because anyone can do it doesn't mean that anyone will. If the PC doesn't do it, perhaps it will go undone. I'm not asking for the PC not to be exceptional. I'm asking for any exceptionalness the PC has not to be built into him by the designers. That I understand. It was TrashMan's claims that seemed to imply any amount of exceptionality is "Marty Stu" and terrible. But he seems to have adjusted, or re-presented it, as an inherent nature/circumstance distinction. And while that has it's problems, I don't see that discussion going anywhere.

And it's precisely what you were promoting as a justification against quests awarding XP. Metagaming as an excuse to not do quests. Here: "It means, for instance, that you can't ever design a story where the consequences are ugly and evil no matter what you do, and the only way to "win" is not to play." That was your argument for not doing quests. That you "win" by not doing them. That you win by metagaming, and somehow this is an argument against quests being the source of XP. But you still did the quest. This is a close approximation of what I was saying. It's a complicated discussion and veers a little off from whether the quest should grant XP or not.

They don't have to. Is there some law where the protagonist should ALWAYS have a way to "win"? No. It's not metagaming unless you're obsessed with ALWAYS "winning" instead of experiencing the story that's out there. I'd like a fair variety. I don't have to always save the hostages. I never said you did. What are you even talking about? Choosing not to save the hostages is part of player agency. It is metagaming if you have some preconception that avoiding a quest is the only way to victory. That's your original statement. And that is the definition of metagame.