Tale

To keep the ball rolling, I want to give a fair example of what I think are mature themes. Let's take a war. The way this shows up in lots of work is that the evil army invades their good neighbor and that's terrible. When I think of a mature approach to war, I think of a work that motives the invading army not because of good vs. evil, but because the invaders have suffered an extensive drought for the past few seasons or years. However, inside the neighboring country is a freshwater river surrounded by adequate farmland. His people, starving and dying, are still mostly a moral sort. They would balk at the idea of a war to steal their neighbor's land. So the king sends out his spymaster, who comes back and points him at a group of feuding clans on the border. They've been killing each other off and on for 3 generations and everyone left them alone. This time is different, when the clan on their side of the border loses a particular battle, news spreads around the kingdom about an unprovoked attack from the neighbor. The people of the neighbors look like just like us, but they are truly sub-human beasts who will kill for petty reasons. They must be pushed back to protect the borders. And the biggest threat is perhaps that town with the river and surrounding farmland. Maybe the king troubles himself over the fact that he has to lie to his people, send them off to die and kill so that perhaps their children won't starve. Or maybe he hasn't the slightest qualm about what he is doing, believing without question that it's always the needs of his people before any moral obligation. These are the things I think about.

I don't really care about finding a ton of books to read in the game, but a well fleshed out background that shows in the world detail is important to me. If there's background on why the "Church of the Blind God" has those particular stained windows and why all the priests wear plaid on the holy day, that can make for some interesting tales. And everyone loves the legendary item with the extensive backstory.

I don't know if anyone remembers it, but here's an old (nearly 6 years) forum post from Sawyer. Now, remember that this is 6 years old, things could have changed. And I know a few people took offense to it when it made the rounds last time. I'm posting it because I think that if they do romances, we're liable to see them done differently. We might see tragedy and loss, heartbreak, characters that grow into feeling that the relationship isn't fit for them, or even romances where the player is on the receiving end of a bad relationship. Or maybe his opinion has changed entirely in the intervening time.

The last time I took a break from this forum, the first thing I did coming back was a forum search for him, just to see what he'd been up to. What I found I was sad. I liked him. Reminded me of myself in my younger years. Always trying to reinvent himself.

He was lead on the fabulous Mask of the Betrayer expansion. That's enough for me to put him on my favorite designer lists.

Alternatively, all races are types of humans that evolved or magically transformed to have distinct traits.

Just a theory here. The stretch goals are being withheld to generate a second wave of buzz and new backers when they are revealed. They may be doing the same with news updates on the project. Like the 4 day teaser. Parcel out information to keep up momentum. It seems to be a common strategy for successful kickstarters. Alternatively, they hadn't finalized them yet. They didn't even make that kickstarter video until earlier in the week. So they could be playing it by ear.

I think part of the idea here is that they'll pander to the backers a bit. That said, pandering to me partially includes challenging me. Turn some of the things I expect on their head, either fundamentally or as a sidequest.

Hats alone could make this a game of the decade. But seriously, I'm doubtful that we'll get much character detail from it with it being isometric. That said, we may still get plenty of visible customization on paper dolls or character portraits. Though the tier reward of a custom portrait implies static portraits. I do enjoy customization. I think I wasted $10 this past week just on parts for Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. So I support the idea, but I'll be understanding if it's more left to the imagination.

Oh gosh, yes. I thought this went without saying, but it doesn't hurt to say.

I really really enjoy the idea of being a bunch of homeless wanderers going from town to town, raiding people's shelves, and picking up the odd parcel delivery. The entire group is a bunch of people with no place in this world, just passing through. That said, that's a personal preference. If the game functions fine without forcing either way, that'd be perfect.

Here's a similar topic, for those who'd like to read it. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/59957-what-type-of-game-system/ I still favor class systems for the gimmick potential and for the ability to have different stats mean different things. However, I understand that's a bunch of extra work creating the new classes and may not be the best use of resources.

I read an article pretty recently that lamented the fact that fantasy isn't quite as fantastic as it should be. You've got this space where artists are free to be incredibly creative creating entirely new peoples and physical laws, but instead they just derive from Tolkien. So, I agree with what you are saying. And I also heavily agree with the idea that what races do exist should include significant diversity.

I like the idea that you start off struggling to survive. What I dislike is the idea that the random dice gods decide if you live long enough to make it to level 2. No low level PC should be able to die from a single critical hit from nameless bandits, unless the encounter is really weighed in his favor in other ways.

I've been pushing for RPGs to revamp their dialogue system. I'm no fan of cutscene dialogue, where you're basically just held hostage to someone else trying to talk to you. It'd be nice if the dialogue system was something more contextual. Someone tries to talk to you, you press a button which brings up response choices. Or, if you want to ignore them, or even break the conversation mid discussion, you can just walk away. Basically, you still have enough control that while the bad guy is giving his epic speech about how he's misunderstood (and also a god) and that he really tried to be better (but now he will devour your soul), you get to just start firing arrows at him mid-sentence. Being able to walk away from conversations was a nice feature in Neverwinter Nights.

How else are you going to get the golem armor in the third game?

By my understanding a mature theme is a theme that acknowledges the complexity of situations and may potentially challenge ideas of the audience. If art and theme are a form of communication, then the mature theme is the speech intended to make people think and become informed, as opposed to the speech designed to only pander by reiterating shallow commentary the audience will agree with out of hand.

The one thing I like about class systems is it gives them opportunities to be distinctive. The classes get to have different resource pools, ability pools, and gimmicks. You get your wizards that cast with mana, your necromancers that cast based on how many corpses are on the field, and your moneymancers cast based on how much change they can fling right at people's faces. In a more unified system, each stat tends to have a specific purpose for all characters. Your magic user is intelligent, unless its healing magic, then he is wise. But what if I want a charming caster? Or a rogue who's really not as dextrous as he should be, but makes up for it with brute thuggery. He can jam a lockpick in that door so hard it'll open just to get him to leave it alone. Now, the problem with that kind of system is they have to build all those classes.

/salute

Sometimes. Depending on the game. It's not a well known or even well utilized feature of Steam. And you have to be careful about how you uninstall Steam or it might suck up the game data with it. So there's some catches in there.

Welcome back, Alan! I say as he zips past us to never be seen again.

So it's going to be a musical RPG!

There's also D&D games sale on GOG which sounds like a good idea if new title is about to be announced. Or maybe it's just a coincidence, I don't know anything anymore. Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition comes out in 4 days. That's probably the reason for the GOG promo.

I think TLJ/Dreamfall would be pretty safe for Funcom. It can be done without a very hefty budget and it's bound to generate buzz on its own. It just won't be a massive success that would get the back on their feet to making high budget MMOs. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about.

It's setup to appear only once per day for people. There's a cookie you can delete that manages this. (obsidian.net cookie, not forums.obsidian.net)