Sannom

They've apparently just now managed to make special abilities scale with level, so I'm not surprised that they had a number of unforeseen implementation issues. Let's be honest here, HK-47 is pretty much C3PO if he was murderous and blood-thirsty, and the contrast and how it played with the Star Wars fan's expectations were pretty much the point. You can't say that about Edér and Minsc. I doubt it comes to the mind of most people to compare them. It was the same thing in the KOTOR comics, the writer built its alien characters on the foundation of them being the complete opposite of the stereotypes associated with their species : a shy Trandoshan nauseated by the hunt, a duo of stupid Ithorians who are also weapon fetishists, a sociopathic Zeltron, etc.

If they go the Wasteland 2 route, you may as well wait a full year and go for the Remastered edition.

I guess do what Gromnir usually does, wait six months after the release of the game? You've got three more months to go.

There are a few very loud posters around here who keeps saying that the Devil is a gimmick character, using descriptions such as "Golem-inhabited-by-the-soul-of-a-murderer-and-oh-look-evul-rogue-I'm-evul-look-at-me-oh-I-won't-kill-you-you-are-interesting-to-me". I think some people got from that she was supposed to be some sort of serial killer getting high on killing who also happened to kick puppies in her spare time. So when they read the actual description, they get confused.

What I find most interesting about the Devil so far is that it sounds like some really advanced soul technology, the kind that only Engwythian are supposed to have mastered, but that lady has been in a metal construct for fifteen years, top. You really want your terror bird in the game, heh? I wonder what kind of special ability it could have?

The paywall for reading at Something Awful being random as f***, this is what Josh said :

I'm still not clear on what your definition of "expansion" is, sorry. Does it need to continue the story / be another story entirely, as opposed to a new hub in the same story? Because Throne of Bhaal had the Watch Tower (or whatever the name of that thing) and I understand that this is pretty much how BG1's expansion worked too.

What do you mean exactly by "a real expansion"? To me, the White March sounds like it.

A Pale Elf or Godlike (one of the kind we haven't seen yet) with a poleaxe. The White Lion fur is optional. No.

My one big request for a sequel is for the team to try and create a system in which combat isn't central and mandatory. Preferably while still making the game party-based, but if that has to go, I would understand.

The irony here being that Josh is so far the only developer at Obsidian confirmed to be a cat person

The death of nearly all Jedi on Katarr, that's what. It's the core of the Triumvirate's belief, that without Jedi and even with just a few Sith, the Sith win and the Galaxy is theirs. And since they didn't fight like Malak and stuck to the shadows, striking then disappearing, it's not unbelievable that they were a big problem for a Jedi Order weakened by the war and reduced to something like a hundred members. And then, of course, they didn't know anything about Nihilus and the kind of devastation he could bring, especially on a world like Katarr, which was populated almost entirely by Force Sensitives. Pretty much this. DS!Revan feels like the one who got the short end of the stick, not LS!Revan. Sure, Revan ended Malak's threat in the LS ending to KOTOR 1, but the war still ravaged countless worlds, the Republic isn't in great shape and the new Sith threat that appears after Malak does not fight like him at all. They strike from the shadows and only focus on the Jedi, believing that with them gone, the Sith win. It's no wonder that those very efficient attacks, following so soon after the war, brought the Jedi and the Republic to its knees. But DS!Revan? He had the Star Forge and probably Bastilla with him, he had weapons and men, and yet he fails to do anything with it? Not to mention that the Sith are believed to be wiped out despite their overwhelming victory! It's always funny when people get introduced to Gromnir and don't get it .

I think what Flow meant to say is that it didn't appear in the transcript.

Amen to that, Gromnir. At least for Skyforge, it feels like they will get out of it eventually, but Armored Warfare? That's something that asks for a lot of involvement from the developer over a long period. Really hoping that Pillars of Eternity won't be the only universe that Obsidian will work in that will excite me!

I don't know, Obsidian right now seems stuck on some projects of varying interests for their fanbase and them : they help with Skyforge, they're the main developers of Armored Warfare, etc. Aside from PoE and maybe the adaptation of Pathfinder's Card Adventure Game, they don't seem to have much of the stuff which made them famous on their plate.

Tim Cain was a head honcho once, right? Now he's working at Obsidian, and hasn't been involved in a head honcho position yet.

Pallegina is a character for whom "realpolitik" means "Let's not be **** and try to take advantage of an allied country stuck in its worse crisis!". Kana's whole reason for travelling is to find something that he believes could swing the political balance in his home country from "Let's isolate ourselves and prepare for conflict!" to "Let's continue exploring the world and exchanging with other cultures!". Edér is staying optimistic in front of very, very bad odds. I don't know how all of this is dark and pessimistic. At least two of your examples are not about the setting being "dark and gritty" but about the country you're in going through a major crisis, having already lost an entire generation worth of its population to a phenomenon that they don't understand and have no idea how to stop. Compare that to Dragon Age, in which discrimination against Elves is systematic, magic users are living in an opressive system which mostly keeps them around because they're useful and an entire species of monstrous abominations periodically tries to destroy all living things. Or Game of Thrones, in which the low borns are at the mercy of vicious men who kill with impunity, rape (especially against women) is extremely common place, slaves are the foundation of an entire culture, the only magic there is is bloody and destructive and rarely beneficial to anyone, etc.

I think that's Gromnir's point : the alignment of the characters is part of their character sheet, and their reaction to your reputation is based entirely on that. They only react to the number, not to something in particular you did. You can't have companions who could accept some harsh measures while still having a line that they wouldn't cross, for example. It gives them a bit more of a personality, but it doesn't mean that they're well-written.

Aside from Edwin's necklace and Viconias's magic resistance, which BG1 and BG2 companions had (useful) special abilities that the player could never have?

...W40K is also supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, despite Games Workshop's attempts lately at pretending it's totally not. Please tell me they didn't try to make the Orks serious.

You've got other examples beside Kreia? Because Durance and Grieving Mother already feels like Kreia split in two, with Durance getting all the politics and morals that some people hated from Kreia, and giving the player the opportunity to just shred him.

Problem with that is, Early Access means buying the game, right? And Early Access is a Steam feature. So basically you lock out any and all backers who may have wanted to use GOG or another service. That does not seem efficient at all.

I don't think it would have warranted the title "Early Access". There are bugs that are being corrected, sure, and tweeks to the UI, but the game is feature complete and the things added are corrections rather than evolutions. Early Access games which actually use that time and money to improve the game generally go through much more impressive steps. I don't think Kerbal Space Program was anywhere as complete when it went out on early access than it is in its final release, for example. And there are, of course, the games that are/were released in an even worse state, The Witcher being my go-to example here, with multiple patches throughout its life which brought massive improvements to the games (the loading times one, and then the one with the graphical enhancements).

I think Orlans are a bad species to make your point, since it's been confirmed that their gender dimorphism is clearly in favor of the women. There is also the "issue" of the different species. Because, I guess that statistically a party entirely made up of human women fighters would have a slight weight and upper body strenght disadvantage when compared to a party of human men fighters, but the later would have the same exact disadvantage (arguably even more pronounced) if they fight a party made up of Amaua women fighters.

Aloth being my main trap-spotter, I tend to hear her regularly ("What do you think that thing does?"). I also heard a banter between her and Kana, but I couldn't really understand what she said. Judging by Kana's reaction, it had to be something a bit dirty and she mentions his breeches, so I'm guessing it had something to do with pulling his pants down.