Bos_hybrid

No, they don't. They champion the illusion of choice. Most of their choices have no consequence. Later games from them are limiting choice due to their focus on cinematic presentation and full VO. To be honest though, I don't understand you desire for romance. When you claim you can imagine party members on the one hand, and prefer that to dev designed companion. Then on the other championing dev developed romances. Surely you could just imagine the romance, right?

Fallen Enchantress thoughts: Firstly you choose you ruler and faction. You can create both your own ruler and faction. If you do you are brought to a page were you assign stats to you faction, it gives you limited points to choose from which is to determine what your factions special abilities are. An example I made my empire have the slaver ability, this allows my empire to raze an enemies city and add half of that population to one of my city. Next you ruler, here you choose your ruler profession(Warlock 50% spell damage/ Bandit lord can recruit bandits there is 11 to chose from) spend points on magic schools and talents. The magic schools are fire, air, earth, water and death. Each school has multiple levels that add more powerful spells. The talents provide bonus in combat, an example being might gives you 3 attack(damage) there are ten to choose from. There is also a chance to give yourself an extra point by selecting a weakness, such as Cruel this increase the cost to hire champions and add unrest to your empire. There are essentially two modes, first the map screen. You'll spend the majority of your time here. This is the screen you will be spending most of the time in. You build cities and outposts to expand field of influence(resources), add improvements to them(sage for more research, market for gold etc), move your ruler and troops etc. Research comes in three trees, Magic(Item, spells, quest level) Civic (buildings/farming etc) and military( armor, weapons training etc). Resources are very important, you have your basic ones like game, metal and horses, magic shards(air, fire death, water, earth) these give you mana each turn and increase your strength in that particular school. Finally you have camps, these allow you to recruit unique troops, for darklings(little creatures) to trolls demons and drakes. Not 100% sure but I believe there are also dragon breeding grounds, to access these camps however you need to research the tech. These creatures can be extremely powerful, a demon can take out several groups of enemy troops. Monster and their lairs will also pop up on the map, the monsters do re-spawn if you don't destroy their lairs, they also roam so be careful with scouts and settlers, it's also quite possible to run into high level monsters at the start, and cities and improvements can be destroyed by them. Champions will also dot the map, these can be hired and work like your ruler. You will also find things of interest like ancient battle grounds where you can find equipment to equip on your ruler and champions. To inns and houses where you will begin quests. For example the first one I got had me collecting a plants from a few tiles away to create a restoration potion, when I returned to the house and got the potion from the witch an undead creature attacked you had a choice to flee or fight. I fought and beat the undead where another choice appeared, give the undead the potion or or keep it for myself, I gave it to the creature and now it joined my army. Quite useful too as whenever it kills something it creates another undead, up to 9. There are bigger quests and adventures, but in the beta many didn't work properly, I assume they've been fixed now. There are also entire areas of the map that are an quest in themselves, such a poisoned bog, to capturing an ancient forgotten city, these are epic quests and require a higher level ruler and research to access. Completing quests and killing the monster that roam the map net your ruler and participating champions xp and loot, at level up you get 5 random traits to choose from, being from advancing a magic school to increasing your magic resistance. Not all are equal, some have the rare attachment to them, these trait might not appear again so you have to choose carefully. Equipment is gained from quests, lairs and buying them(assuming you have the tech and improvements. You get rings, armor and weapons. Having said that there isn't a lot of loot, basically leather>>>>plate path, with other armor with enchantments popping up. Magic can also be used at the map screen and in a change from the beta is very powerful. From creating plagues to summoning creatures to creating a volcano to destroy cities and troops. However these cost a lot of mana the a fore mentioned volcano summoning cost 500 mana, considering at the start of the game you have 50, it takes a while to build up to anywhere near that level, especially when a simple flame bolt in tactical mode cost 17 mana without reducing talents. Mana builds up slowly based on your ruler, city improvements and shards. Then is the other empires vying for control, you select how many you want, and their difficulty, at higher levels they seem to be fairly confident and are very aggressive at expanding their influence and gaining those resources. Lastly cities level up based on population, at level 2 you chose a type. The choice is town, fortress and conclave. Town is about money and wonders, fortress is about troops and conclave is about research. At each level after that you get choices on special improvements depending on the path you chose. The second screen is the turn based tactical mode, don't expect it to be very deep. It's fun and interesting with all the different troops you can get, but the areas are small and the battles are quick. Once again magic is devastating here if you got the mana, a simple fireball can eliminate large groups of enemies in a single go, however there is friendly fire so be careful. The AI seems to do a good job at making life hard by ganging up on an individual, however they don't seem to make the right choice, going after my undead while my ruler hits them with non aoe magic doesn't seem too smart. Also a lot of the time you won't want to use mana(why waste it on a pack of wolves), so get some champions that specialize in either melee or archery would be a good bet or have troops that specialize in this(assuming you have the tech). At this stage, I really haven't got far enough in to make a good judgement on how the current turn based battles work, most of my opinions come from the beta, it does seemed to have improved, but to what degree I don't really know. Still I feel it's add more to the game than if it wasn't in. Honestly I'm very impressed with this game.

Fallen Enchantress. Played the beta a while back(and enjoyed it) but haven't tried the latest builds, now that it's been fully released, it will be interesting to see what's changed.

Hardly, it came out after Kickstarter ended. Besides DA3 and PE are not in competition with each other.

Don't want PE simulating fights over spending too much gold on Amulet of wisdom +5, being yelled at for being away too much and going shopping with said spouse.

Absolutely. How else can I have a party of Mages?

I have to go to a movie festival so I can't detail the reasoning by which I liked some of my favourites (three of which are Isabela, Aveline, and Varric) at this time, but if you *really* want me to, I will. Sometime people don't understand that getting any reaction from a player is a win for the writer. Hating or loathing a character means the writer did something right, just like if they brought out the like reaction. A writer has failed when it fails to draw any emotion from the reader/player/watcher. Having said that only Varric, Aveline and the Arishock got any reaction from me. The rest nothing. And I'm not just talking companions, I'm talking every other character. Apathy was the prevailing emotion from my playthrough of DA2. My bad, no more thread derailment from me.

Which has zero to do with PE. PE has minimal VO, and is not at the very top end of graphics add to that CDP created TW2 engine and you have zero relevance to PE. Those where the reasons why TW2 was 'short'. Besides that was TW2 best feature. Take away that and TW2 is half the game it is. PE should have multiple pathways, it encourages replaying far more than any other mechanic. It also adds a real C&C to the story, something that rpgs should have. Look at everyone of Obs latest games and you'll notice C&C is emphasized more by them than any other company. Quality>Length As for the OP, multiple paths are a good thing, spoiling them at the beginning of the game is a poor way. Add to that starting the branches that early is too far out of PE budgetary scope. What you should hope for is something in the final 3rd or 4th quarter of the game for the branching to begin, that is the most to hope for, considering the budget of this game.

Wait what? Well that has just thrown out the deep and well written romance claim folks have been asking for. I would be willing to bet ME/DA romances take a lot longer than a week to write. You know the type everyone has been saying they don't want. I actually don't think it's bio's inability to write 'romances' that leads to bad or shallow romances, and more of good multiple choice deep romance doesn't lend itself to RPGs. No offense to Obs, but I don't think they can pull it of well either.

The romance forum did. There was a total drama overload and the mods pulled the plug on the entire thing. Mass exodus ensued. So... Sagani sweat analysis incoming?

Hmmm flight sim no. A new sci-fi space sim from Obs..... Oh yes.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1447560584/more-oldschool-turn-based-4x-space-strategy-game

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-10-19-project-eternity-how-chris-avellone-blew-by-4-million-on-kickstarter

This thread is purgatory.

It's enough. As most other have said quality>quantity.

But that is exactly what happens. Grey games, force the role of hero/anti-hero on the player. You go from Jade Empire, with different endings, different characters and different abilities depending on your path. To DA2............ Do we need it to be labeled as closed fist or dark side.... No of course not. But the removal of an alignment metre should not equal the removal of the path. Nope. It's just as valid a play style as night in shinning armor saving the damsel in distress. Another thing I want to talk about is people getting mixed up about the term grey world. You can have 'grey' factions(and therefore a seemingly grey world), but inside those factions you still have good, bad and everything in between. An example, the Vailian Republics has an electoral council. I'm guessing this is made up of senators and wannabe senators(or whatever they want to call themselves) that run for election. Now while the Vailian Republic is 'grey', it's senators are of all kinds. Some are for the greater good, others selfish, cold and calculating, some are neither, but they aren't all grey. When I hear the world is grey, to me that means the factions and beliefs/religion(no temples of Cyric) are all grey. Not the people. At least that is how it should be.

Don't you need to use a VPN for that?

From you earlier: Generally I see this followed by lets make the PC grey. I loathe this. I don't want to see this, just let Obsidian do, what they did in their previous games. Mask of the Betrayer Fallout New Vegas Alpha Protocol When a character is evil, they do often murder for any number of reasons. They are also psychopathic. Quite often when people ask for evil and then complain about that path having the PC murder people, it's because they didn't really want to play evil, they just wanted to play an anti-hero. Being evil generally means a lack of compassion, selfish, lusting, greedy, narcissistic and a willingnous to do anything to get what they want. Some will go about it differently, but the end result is the same. Some are secretative, some are manipulative, some are brutal, but they will always be psychopathic murderers. There is a reason for this, it's finite resources. Writing takes time and even though PE doesn't have full VO, we can't go expecting every choice to represent the character we've dreamed up. All I ask is that they give us a choice, instead of making the PC grey, and tying us to the hero path. I'll go back to a previous post: That sounds like you have a problem with being a murderous psychopath. Even though clinically that is what 'evil' is. If your not psychopathic, your not going to be evil. It's an required trait of someone evil. I you liked it, you wouldn't be complaining about it's presence. How about you quote the part of my post where i said that. I'm having a hard time finding it myself. People complain that evil is there just for the sake of it, but not that the exact same is true for the good and neutral choices. I had assumed you were one of them from this: 'being evil just because you can' Then why post: 'I don't really want there to be an evil option if it's equally bad to what it is in 90% of games'. You would of posted instead 'I like evil options, but I would prefer to have a better selection of them'. Not the removal of the option.

Crap, now Alma memories. I think there is one thing we can all agree on. No raping of the PC in PE.

I didn't, but that's because I don't remember James Bond ever getting raped.

I always loved that theme.

Broken logic, if the evil option is written badly, 99% chance the good and neutral options are too. So by using your logic, we should drop all options. Because Obs can't write them well(despite writing them well in multiple games.) How is it broken? Maybe you should recheck your own logic before drawing ridiculous assumptions from so little info. Because something was badly written in other games, it can't be written good in others. But keep the good/neutral option that were written equally as bad. If it's not broken, it's biased. You don't like something, so you don't want to see it included. Basically it's I don't like it, so it's crap. When games have badly written 'evil' choices, it has little to do with being evil, and more to do with that particular writers or devs inability to portray it well. Your point again is, it wasn't done well in other games so don't include it in this one. Despite the fact it has been. Self serving (Values themselves above all else) Greedy (doing anything to get money/valuables/land etc) Power hungry (desire for magical/political/immortality again does anything to get it) Besides there is nothing wrong with playing a murdering psychopath if one wants to. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean others don't. Restricting freedom is a bad thing. Truthfully I would rather play a subtle evil, but I'm fine with psychopathic power hungry too. I would much rather play a murdering psychopathic power hungry villain, than a run of the mill good guy hero. Heroes just aren't as interesting to me as villains. But being good or neutral just because you can is better or good writing? Afraid not.

Explain why one way should be and another not? They should both be rewarded with different and unique content. No, I think I have explained perfectly well, if the player wants to go around murdering everyone in real life they should accept the consequences of their actions, there is a reason why people who go on killing sprees end up dead. Except some don't. Besides having a bounty posted on the party is a content reward, it just has to make more sense then 'you didn't kill everyone' despite the fact no one survived. Or the invisible law seen you do it.

Just seen Way of the Samurai 4 was released on the PSN network for $39.95 on their store, thought to myself awesome going to buy it. Logs on to the playstation store..... Oh wait I'm in Australia, time to cough up $79.95 instead........... No PSN, not going to happen.