Starwars

Man, that screenie is beautiful. Can't wait to see the areas in this game, it's gonna be a treat. Also, mostly excited about the stretch goal at 3.5, but doubt we'll reach it. Don't care too much about the stronghold though. Nevertheless, added on 20 more bucks which shall be used for the expansion.

Goddamn... The game can be pretty damn tense at times. I hope they can patch out some small annoyances though.

Thanks a lot Hurlshot! And yeah, learning an instrument is a lot of hard work, but it's also so much fun. As far as singing and playing goes, yeah... Just practice. One thing you can try is that you just play the chords in a very simple pattern at first (just simple up and down strumming, or even just one downstroke per chord) and try to sing over that. Practicing with a metronome will also do wonders all around.

I did. Thanks a lot LadyC, glad you liked it!

Thanks for the kind words Meshugger!

Kaelyn the Dove (though her dialogue was written by Avellone) is arguably my favorite companion in a RPG ever. Wonderful if you play a character that supports her, and wonderful to "hate" on if you play a character that disagrees with her. She works really well all around.

And of course... One-of-Many who is sadly missing from the picture (for obvious reasons), And who happesn to be one of the best evil companions ever in a game.

One more thing that annoys me a lot: You can't pick up items from dead squadmates. Would be a good feature to have I think, as well as maybe having the ability to swap items mid-mission (counting as a full action of course). Also, I'm not really a big fan of the "storyline" or "narrative" (I use those words loosely here) as it's presented in the game. Just feels completely unnecessary to me. I'm really enjoying the game despite my whining. Finally managed to build up a few squad-members that are decent and you can really feel the difference in the field. Though it also makes you more cautious.

Hahahaha, did they really put his face in there too... That's awesome.

Something I really dislike also is that the aliens get a seemingly free move whenever you "discover" them, I hate that. Also, goddamn... Royally screwed up one of the 'disarm the bomb' missions. Managed to only save one of the squadmates and the bomb went off.

I've not played for very long so keep that in mind. So far, main bad bits for me are the "story/cutscene" bits. I'm not sure how much of this is related to the tutorials but when you start, there is a fair amount of listening to various people in your base talking about this and that. It makes the beginning rather boring (because what they say is not particularly interesting). Once that gets abit more spaced out, the game gets a lot more engaging. Also, the PC controls are a bit awkward at times. It's still pretty easy once you learn it but it could've been better. Great thing is that the game can actually be really hard. Making tactical withdrawals, losing a mission just to save some of your squadmembers is very much a thing here. I highly recommend playing this on Ironman (whatever difficulty level you may feel comfortable at) just to have some extra tension going. That isn't something I normally recommend in games per say (just for hardcore people) but it feels right here I think. EDIT: Forgot to mention... Quite possibly the biggest flaw is in the combat-missions. The Line of Sight feels completely off at times, I've had some real clipping problems, people shooting through walls and such. That is disappointing because it cab the actual gameplay quite a lot. I'm really enjoying it all in all though.

Did a recording test, quickly recorded a song I've written. Apologies about the low volume, haven't got the mic-in level fixed. Check it out:

Doesn't come out until Friday here in the EU. I'm thinking I might unlock this on US release date with a VPN.

It's been too many years Labadal, no excuse for being spoiled at this point in time! Anyways, hope you enjoy the campaign as much as I do. It's one my absolute all-time favs.

I resent the implication that I am not a person who really love good music ! Ever suffered to hear one of your favourite music being used as background for a commercial, its whole texture work having been cleaned up to make it more palatable to general audiences ? It's heart wrenching ! T_T You simply cannot if you prefer synthetic music to instrumental music! That's a question of true faith! And yes, I know what you are talking about with these commercials.... I think many people even don't hear differences between instrumental and synthetic music because they are not as interested in music at all or because their hifi equipment is not good enough to evolve the differences. That's especially a problem (or the solution if you have a restricted budget anyhow....) for PCs and Laptops because most of them suffer from serious distortions and bad sound hardware in general.... "Synthetic" music is every bit as as real as any other music out there. And that's coming from someone who has been playing "live" instruments for 15 years now. Of course, if you're literally just trying to recreate the sound of an orchestra through synthetic means... Then yeah... Obviously a real orchestra would sound better. Which is why you instead make use of the strengths of each medium. A case in point is the Astral Plane music in MotB: Even the synthy strings are used to great effect in how it's interwoven with the rest of the soundscape. The track provides an incredible context for the scene where it's played.

Finished up Mask of the Betrayer. I love, love, love that campaign, great stuff. Also, got an ending that I'd not seen before, where One-of-Many kills Safiya. Pretty chilling stuff actually.

I like the idea of having different effects for critical hits and I would welcome critical misses with bad effects as well. Like it's been said above, I think it's just a nice way to spice up the combat and bring some element of randomness to it. I like the unpredictability of it and I'll gladly sacrifice some of the "ultimate tactical control" for those "oh hell YES" or "oh god nooo!" moments you can get at times. That said, it would seem that critical misses could be a feature possibly tucked into the options menu if players want them toggled on or not.

Hope us unprivileged Internet dwellers can get a look at this game sometime soon.

I think that DA: O, with its unfortunate flaws, is the best game Bioware has put out together with BG2. If lazily comparing them, I think BG2 has it beat in terms of good encounter design (though both games have trash encounters) and world exploration (Athkatla). DA have a much more interactive world in terms of different ways of solving quests and while the overarching story (boring darkspawn attacks the world) is really boring, the details are in my opinion far more interesting than the D&D of BG2. I think the BGs are some of the most overrated games you can find (though BG2 is still a damn good game on its own). Also, I never understood what people expected of the origins. It was pretty clear to me that they would not provide a unique path for each of them throughout the game (the game is definitely large as is already), and it was always made clear that the premise of the game is that you become a Grey Warden, and that is what drives the game and character. The origins change the game because, yes... They give you completely different playable intros to the game. I don't understand why people somehow think this doesn't count for anything. Some of them give interesting options in the game such as Human nobles being able to marry Queen Anora, aside from the other options already available in the game. But again, they are unique intros to the game. This is definitely noteworthy thing in my book. I would've liked more actual consequences myself but in terms of choices to make within the quests of the game, it easily has the BGs beat. EDIT: That said, I don't think that there's much that PE could really take from the game anyways. I always viewed DA as a game inspired a bit by the BG games but in the guise of a AAA game with voiceacting and all that comes with the territory. PE is not aiming for that.

I'm sure we will all be here, firing off salutes when you make your exit from the forums, and the devs will probably cry themselves to sleep that night... And in April of 2014... The game comes out, and we will all be standing there with a single tear running down our cheek, thinking... 'Was he right all along...? Was metiman right?! Was Vancian the answer all along?!' Anyways, I hope these Q&As will continue. They're a great way to get some info on what is planned.

This is something that I think is a narrow-minded view to take. You can compose good music without an orchestra. You do not need an orchestra for a fantasy soundtrack. Having an orchestra does not mean that the soundtrack will be better. If one really wants to embrace the classic, epic, fantasy style, then yes... An orchestra would obviously be a good choice. But again, just having an orchestra does not equal having a better score. It does not make things more "professional" than any other approach. Something like the Diablo 1 dungen tracks, or the various soundtracks to the Silent Hill's would've not benefitted from an orchestra. There are so many ways to approach music in games and more often than not, it's disappointing to me to see that musicians don't (or are maybe not allowed) to really get experimental with what they do. And so often you get orchestral music that, which while it may be great on its own, is simply put on "top" of a game instead of the music feeling more organic to the world and bringing out the intricacies of it. The world of PE seems to be a vastly multi-cultural one, so let's bring in lots of influences from different cultures. Like someone mentioned, a great strength of something like the Witcher 1 soundtrack was that it really gave texture to the world, it spoke of the culture one could see in the game. It reinforced the sense of being in a *place*. An orchestra is not *needed* for this approach for example, in fact , in many cases, it would probably be superflous. I think it'd be awesome to get some live musicians/instruments for the soundtrack, and I think mixing that with cleverly used music composed on a computer can produce fantastic and interesting results. And of course, would likely keep the costs down. That's not to say that one can't get experimental while working with an orchestra of course. But it has a tendency (for whatever reason) to instantly put the soundtrack down the same ol' boring epic fantasy music stereotypes that we've heard oh-so-many times.

1) Challenging the deeper you go. This doesn't just mean having plenty of hard combat encounters. Ideally, the "get through situations in a variety of ways" will still apply here but yeah, it gets harder and harder the deeper you go. 2) Interesting lore to uncover/story of its own. Would love if you could possibly uncover interesting secrets of the world... Which brings me to: 3) Non-linearity within the dungeon itself. Yes, you could possibly uncover interesting secrets about the world. But it's not guaranteed if you don't explore thoroughly enough. It will hopefully not be a linear "beat this dungeon" experience. Make the dungeon a complex setpiece of its own. 4) Heavy atmosphere. The Dead God's Vault in MotB was short all in all but the atmosphere there was *fantastic*. It *felt* like a dangerous place to venture into. Not talking about the actual mechanics of the dungeon here, but just purely in the audio-visual sense. It felt oppressive.

I'm not too keen to have an orchestral soundtrack personally. I would personally love it if the soundtrack was a bit more scaled back and "intimate". Having live instruments, certainly, but a full-on orchestra is not something that is necessarily exciting for me. But like it was mentioned above, whatever musical vision Justin has is obviously what they should go for. But just not orchestra just for the sake of having an orchestra,

I would've preferred it if the kickstarter campaign was less obvious about namedropping the IE game because even though they are similar in one way to another, they also represent 3 pretty different ways of approaching a RPG (or at least that's how fan percepions have "split" them up). Each one has a particular subset of fans, though there's certainly overlaps. And saying "this will be like the IE games" will make for very different expectations. Me? I don't much care for spiritual sequels or what-have-you. I loved Torment but it'd be horrible for some other game to try and live up to that and just fail. I'm pledging my money to PE because it's a new Obsidian RPG with some old-school values to it, with features that I like (new IP, choices/consequences/reactivity, isometric perspective etc) and without publisher interference. The more one tries to wrap it up in "oh it should be like *this* game or *that* game", the more you're setting yourself up to be disappointed.

The unct mods are generally really good and serves to flesh out the game more rather than just add dumb things that don't fit. Freeside especially is a *massive* improvement atmosphere wise. But yes, you will get fps drops and significant stuttering in some areas. And most likely, more crashing-