George Ziets

No problem. Any time.

Sorry - epic fail on my linking skills. Here is the proper link to my formspring: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets

Thank you for the kind words, guys. I will miss the people at Obsidian, and our fans as well. Also, if you feel like chatting about Obsidian games, the industry, or whatever, feel free to swing by my (newly created) Formspring page: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets. I

This is true. I am no longer with Obsidian...

I think I can clarify this a bit. When we developed DS3, Obsidian followed the DS bible that was sent to us by GPG. It turned out that there were some lore conflicts between the first and second DS games, and the "official" backstory follows the original game. Thus, according to the DS bible, Zaramoth predated the Empire of Stars. He was killed by Azunai, which resulted in a massive cataclysm, followed by a dark age. The Empire of Stars emerged later.

If you do pick up the game and enjoy it, I would humbly recommend trying the expansion (Treasures of the Sun) as well. We learned a lot of lessons while making the main game (not so different from NWN2 to MotB, in a way). On TotS, I think we finally hit our stride in terms of area design, more open spaces, and a less linear experience overall.

Personally, I like LP videos. They're a little bit like focus testing - they give me an idea of how players are experiencing our games. I can't speak for our publishers, though.

I'd guess probably not, since I'm not even sure who owns the rights. But I'll mention it to the Powers That Be.

Thanks for the props, C2B! Originally, we had planned to give the companions larger roles (and quests of their own), but these were cut pretty early due to schedule constraints. Based on what was in the game, you probably caught hints of what those quests would have been. I also wanted to give more "screen time" to the Katarina-Lucas sibling relationship, but that suffered the same fate. Story vs. action was a difficult balancing act for DS3 - possibly the toughest challenge I've faced so far in my career. Some action gamers have told me that we got the balance just right, others actually feel that there is still too much dialogue / story. Meanwhile, most traditional RPG gamers would have preferred more of a story focus. I think this is a case where we probably couldn't please everyone, but we tried our best, and I'm glad you still enjoyed the final product. I'm also glad you appreciated the realistic character motivations, which are always important to me in games.

Travis is a great (and very funny) writer. We will miss him.

When you leave the first room, you'll find yourself in a hallway. Look for a lever - it's sitting next to one of the pillars in the center of the hall. If you pull the lever, the next door will open.

Grab the books that are on the pedastals (or in the case of the first room, just interact with the book). Interacting with each of the books will "kill" the sentinels in each room and advance your quest.

I can answer this one. John G. wrote a good part of Anjali's dialogue, and he did an overall polish pass on many of the side-quest NPCs in the game. Travis wrote most of Reinhart's dialogue and about half of Katarina. He also wrote a lot of side-quest NPCs like Leona, the Gunderics, Drakomir, Fitch, etc. The remainder of the side quest dialogue was written by the respective area designers. I wrote the main plotline dialogues (Marten and Odo, Dapper Gent, Meisters, Jeyne, archons, etc.), plus most of Lucas and some of Katarina.

Legion magic is a style that was developed by the old 10th Legion. They took elements from many schools of magic to suit their needs, focusing mainly on practical combat but also borrowing ancient techniques that would serve other purposes, like creating the Causeways. Overall, it is similar in concept to the "Combat Magic" from DS1.

Yes - companion must be active in order to receive Influence.