J.E. Sawyer

Characters of the same race and sex had the same sprites with different tints. Due to weapon and armor proficiency restrictions, you could often tell a character's class pretty easily. In PE, it's more difficult because those restrictions don't exist.

Everything's temp until we ship. We're still messing around with various effects and probably will be for a long time.

It's about incorporating 3D elements into the 2D scene in a way that causes them to blend properly. The Scooby-Doo effect is when dynamic objects appear to be a much different shade of color compared to everything else around it.

It is 2D grass, so it doesn't react to movement or spells being cast, but it does sort properly with characters in it. I.e., characters who are standing in tall grass look like they are standing in the grass, not on it.

My goal with balancing choices in PE is to promote viability rather than to eliminate *~ power buildz ~*. If we spend time implementing options that are so obviously bad that no one (or almost no one) will take them, no one benefits.

In all fairness, though, Obsidian's previous works did not really convince me on that front. Alpha Protocol was... well, balanced in the respect that every build had the potential to become ridiculously overpowered and steamroll everything except f***ing Brayko, but generally, pistols were way more powerful than anything else. KotOR 2 had the expanded lightsaber customization system, which made it possible to tear pretty much anything apart in one round... if you used multiattacks, because power attack was generally useless, and criticals weren't significantly better. Force Lightning also functioned as an insta-win button. Of FNV, I can't say too much, because I've modded it to hell, but I find it telling that I had to install a mod that TRIPLED the damage of firearms in order for the opposition to be actually able to hurt me. Without ever putting points on Endurance. Since their games were always more focused on story, I never had a problem with this, but based on what I've seen so far, I really have my doubts about them delivering that "ultimate tactical combat" experience. But that's a thing I can live without. None of those games were really intended to be like the IE games, though. IWD, IWD2, and BG2 are more in-line with what we're trying to do in PE.

We won't know what the game's rating(s) will be until we're a lot closer to launch, but we aren't doing anything to specifically avoid an M-rating.

Here's the difference between playing with the rep tags on and off. [benevolent] "You seem to have learned your lesson. There's no need to involve the guards. Just don't do it again." vs. "You seem to have learned your lesson. There's no need to involve the guards. Just don't do it again." As in the IE games, what you pick is exactly what your character says/does.

Other actions can as well, but it's rare because emotional intent/motive is much more difficult to determine. Browbeating someone and being pointedly malicious to them for no gain may earn you Cruel rep. If you just walk up to the dude and murder him, it's more likely to increase your negative rep for whatever region/faction he's connected to.

The system is pretty straightforward. Characters react to individual choices you make in the same way that they would in pretty much any other Obsidian game. Whether you see a [Clever] tag in front of your reply before you select it or not, your expectation of how the character is going to respond is going to be based on your understanding of the character. However they respond (positively, negatively, or something else), you just put a penny in the "Clever" jar. If you keep selecting witty/sassy/sarcastic responses or ways of dealing with people, their responses are all going to be based on the context and who they are as individual characters. Where the actual rep comes into play is not in the replies available to you, but in how people talk to you or treat you as person, often outside of the context of you making those individual choices. An NPC might meet you and invite you to a party based on your reputation for wit (even if you're not being particularly witty at the moment). Another person might balk at involving you in a discussion of faith because they assume, based on your reputation, that you're a clown who can't take anything seriously.

Yes. Those are separate options.

No. This system is very similar to what we were doing on The Black Hound in 2003.

You don't know anything about how they will respond ahead of time (outside of your general understanding of the character).

A little more on the labels used for each personality type: we need to use a label because it's a helpful abstraction for how the behavior can be characterized, but different characters will interpret that reputation in different ways. "Clever" can be interpreted as sarcastic, witty, foppish, or irreverent. "Benevolent" can be interpreted as charitable, kind, soft, or weak. "Aggressive" can be interpreted as hot-headed, bold, or impatient. Each of these interpretations has a value judgment associated with it but they are all reactions to similar types of behavior. One character will look at your "Aggressive" behavior and (negatively) think that you fly off the handle at everything, provoke fights, and cause trouble. Another character will look at the same "Aggressive" behavior and admire you for taking charge, being decisive, not letting people push you around, etc.

I believe every race/culture has godlikes amongst them in PE. Correct. As far as anyone can tell, godlike can be born to any race in any part of the known world.

It should be noted that "global" in this sense is not literally globe-spanning, but within the areas where the game takes place.

To be clear, by default any choice that will impact your reputations (personality or otherwise) will be highlighted as such. You're not going to "whoopsy-daisy" pick a cruel option and not know you're getting Cruel rep by doing so unless you opt to turn those indications off. Naturally, these indications are always off if you're in Expert mode. E: And to be even clearer, it's not a morality system. You don't pick personalities for your character to "have". You do things in the game that are tagged with certain personality aspects and they contribute to your reputation for being that kind of a person. The choices you have made previously do not limit your ability to make choices in the future. You can be Benevolent for hours and hours and decide that at this particular point in time, Cruelty is required. If you're Cruel or Benevolent or Clever every once in a while, it's unlikely that anyone outside of the people immediately involved in those circumstances will ever respond; you simply don't have a high enough rep in that personality for it to be a big part of your reputation. The system is meant to pay attention to your consistent patterns of behavior and have characters react to it just as they would react to faction reputations.

"There's a big map here showing the world" or something. Yes. We do this a lot, all over the place. You will see a question mark cursor and can click for a text pop-up with more info.

Yes, spells have casting times. They will likely wind up with three different casting lengths: immediate (what it sounds like), short (~3 seconds), and long (~6 seconds). Spells don't inherently scale, but we may offer Talents that scale spells (Talents are one of the last RPG elements will be implementing and the most flexible until then). There are a lot of unique weapons and the player can add enchantments. Item enchantments do not have durability. Yes, creatures will have unique abilities. Wizards can use any weapon they want, but they gain bonuses when using wands, sceptres, and rods. Their default accuracy with melee weapons is not good.

Moderate pressure tends to increase rather than dampen creativity. We are also allocating time for revision at the tail end of development. It's important that we create a world that has a consistent level of quality in a reasonable amount of time. If we are able to do so, we will have more flexibility to improve (or eliminate) weak areas and polish high points as we see fit.

It should be available on the GDC Vault, though it requires a paid subscription. Sorry.

I'm not sure what part you're referring to. I don't have any problem with goofy dialogues when they fit. "Entertainment" is a good reason to include a dialogue option as long as it's mixed in with choices that have a larger impact.

If we're bad designers, sure.

Just as an aside this is a primary concern I have had from way back. I know this isn't D&D and we won't be using D&D rules but I am still concerned we will be looking at D&D for inspiration. It concerns me for 2 reasons. 1: D&D is well... a poorly balanced game these days and was outright broken in 3rd Edition. 2: It is taking more and more and more inspiration from MMO's. MMO's use the trinity (like I said before) for a very specific set of reasons. The Trinity style combat was designed specifically for MMO's. D&D is more well-balanced in 4E than it has been in any previous edition, IMO. Like every edition of A/D&D, it falls to pieces at high levels, but the class balance is much better than it was in 3.X. D&D Next certainly isn't taking more and more inspiration from MMOs. If anything, it's moving many mechanics back to 3.X (e.g. saving throws and spells/day). 4E also doesn't use "the trinity", though classes are grouped into four categories. In PE's classes, the association with various types less explicit. We identify the various things classes are good at and to what extent, relative to other classes. In a class-based system, I think it's a good idea to identify the core strengths of each class, regardless of how they can be diversified.

It's just a strange lie. Pretty sure Baldur's Gate was the first RPG to have RTS squad management. Darklands had a very similar RTwP system in 1992.