Night Stalker

I agree, this a quality of Life feature that should definitely be implemented when the worst bugs have been stamped out. At the very latest it should be introduced once the expansion arrives.

From what I have heard from Josh, their intention is to delete the BB now that the game has been released.

Have you tried using "-popupwindow" as the command argument in your Steam launch options/after the call the main program in the shortcut until Obsidian gets around to fix it? That should make the game run in a borderless window that takes up the entire screen, and as far as I remember that fixed it for me in the Backer beta.

The backer box version will not be linked to no on-line service. See here for official response.

Wait. What? I'm all for MP, but it's a very large technical process. They have already got the Unity engine, in either case they have already made games before (DS3) which you can play online over Steam. To implement the functionality in PoE from there onwards should not be particularly hard. Well of course all labels such as "hard" are subjective. What I'm saying is that it's IMO not hard to write a program in Java or C# which communicates over an internet connection. It is not very hard to communicate positions on the map of players, creatures, et.c. (especially not if you have already written code that does exactly this, then you don't need to do any deeper thinking about how you want these things to work out in theory). Then you already have pre-alpha multiplayer right there. I have no idea if it's hard or easy to make it efficient, though. Personally, I have never made a multiplayer game so I don't know exactly what would be necessary (although I have many friends who are working on that kind of stuff). I have done some rudimentary stuff using sockets in Java (which is on a comparable level with C#), for example a chat program (pretty much a homebrew MSN Messenger with uglier graphics ). I have also done a lot of other programming of course, but mostly I do sciency stuff, I guess the closest I get to programming multiplayer games is cluster programming with MPICH in C, at least that is about message passing over connections. EDIT: If anyone should believe otherwise, to clarify I am talking about multiplayer as it worked in the IE games. Nothing more, nothing less. Source

If they choose to upgrade to Unity 5 it would be easier for it to be ported to consoles, but it wouldn't be guaranteed.

All the boxed versions uses Steam.

Yes, we will be given the option of preloading. I think they said we will be given the keys on Monday or Tuesday.

In general it is going to be hard to avoid spoilers - but not really for me. The only thing I will be interested in is the general sentiment (and perhaps the review score), and that can be sumed up in a nice spoiler-free blurb. I paid for my tier years ago, and through the process I have gotten my moneys worth. Let us hope the game is also worth playing. It is interesting how streaming is changing the face of reviews however.

Yes, they have confirmed we will.

I quite like the narration.

Yes.

It wouldn't be an Obsidian game otherwise

Really? I find that doubtful, since it's fairly well-established in CRPG circles that respeccing is the devil. Josh Sawyer have explicietly said he wanted it in the in the past, as long as there was a non-trivial cost associated with it. However, he recently revealed on the SA forums that it would cause some complications with the character/leveling system and because of that, the feature was cut.

It was going to be in the game, but it was cut.

One of the Kickstarter tiers included the first expansion, so that is definity happening - the devs have also confirmed it many times during development that there will be one. There are as of yet no official confirmation whether there will be a sequal, but the devs are hoping that it will happen.

Come to think of it, has Obsidian ever done a MP game? Yes, NWN2 had multiplayer, and Dungeon Siege had co-op multiplayer.

Josh Sawyer has stated that this is little to no chance of this happening for the expansion.

Mazisky, would you say your primary objection is practical, or a question of principle?

Since I had already expected the physical swag to be delayed, I am hardly disappointed. Truth be told I have not planned on playing the game for the first month or so, so that the worst bugs (mechanical, systemwide, as well as storyline) can be ironed out.

NPCs can sit, but I think we have been told that the devs had some animation problems with the transition from standing and sitting (both ways).

They have said that they plan on making preload for Steam users (no word on GOG.com preload), so they must also plan on giving us the keys some time in advance.

You cannot pick and choose which parts of the game uses the version 4.x version, and which uses version 5. if you want to use any of the new features of Unity version 5 you have use the entire thing, which all the changes to file formats, API's and what have you. At best there will be some kind of compatibility mode, but I highly doubt it. An engine upgrade could come with a future patch after most of the worst post-release bugs have been dealt with (perhaps coinciding with expansion), but there is zero chance that Obsidian will delay the game this close to the given release date, to port it to a newer version of Unity.

Anyways, if PoE turns out great I would help fund PoE 2, but most likely at a lower tier than I did for PoE. I would however hope that this would not be necessary, and that Obsidian wouldn't require outside funding.