Avantenor

It wasn't that long ago (1,5 years) when I travelled to Rome, I saw posters in the central station, saying "It is important to you that you learn english". Yes, it was a company selling language courses for business english, but in Germany it would be rather like "Need to _improve_ your English? We can help!". They would never imply, you are not able to speak english. That much about every European should be able to play in English. In addition to this, I would advise to all anglophiles to use basic services like taxi driving in Montreal and try out, if english is really enough to get along. My personal experience says no. But maybe I only had three bad days in sequence. The only "must" in the world is having to die. The rest is bonus, pure will or strongly connected to if-else arguments. Quite a lot of asian people would start laughing now. If they could read English, of course. There are more people speaking French, German or Spanish than are living in the countries you've quoted. For example you missed out, that the whole southern american continent speaks spanish (except of Brazil, there it's portugese), including Mexiko and quite a lot of people living in the USA. Wikipedia also says, there are more people speaking spanish as their native language than english. That much about figures. Of course you can exclude several markets and target audiences, it's simply a business decision, as it is always. But in that case they would also disappoint quite a lot of people. If I recall correctly, their games have always been well received in Europe, sometimes even better than in the USA. So I think it's correct, that there is a large group of fans who would like to play the game in their native language. Gaming is about entertainment, having fun after daily work, when your children have gone to bed. And there are a lot of people that don't think doing vocabulary excercises belongs to that. For me, I would be really disappointed if they would not offer a tranlsation to the EFIGS. I do understand english well enough to play a game, but I think Obsidian has the capabilites to do this and that's what makes the difference between a good and an extraordinary dev. If Fargo can do so, Obsidian should be able to do so as well. I don't think it's rocket science to translate a fantasy text and it worked quite well with planescape and all the other games Black Isle or Obsidian released.

That might be true for 10 million swedish people, but there a 329 million spanish native speakers (actually that's more than english natives), 144 million russian native speakers, 100 millions speak german (+ Josh Sawyer) and 68 millions french. These people are used to have translations or it simply does not exist. Of course there is always a anglophile minority telling the opposite, and it's not hard to find them in a purely english-speaking forum. But RPGs often don't use common tongue and have special terms, so it is hard for quite some people to understand. Today no one is still willing to have the dictionary for medieval english besides the monitor just like during the ultima times.

Dragon Age isn't that detailed because of the camera perspective. Isometric view reduces the detail level of objects compared to 1st/3rd person. If you can't focus / zoom / get closer, you e.g. don't see the blurry writings on the piece of paper on the desk. So it's easier in isometric view to create the illusion of a detailed environment because of reduced details. That time can be spend on several other tasks, for example creating more different objects.

You could use a so called debit card. Technically it's a prepaid credit card. You transfer money from your bank account to the card and can use it. There is no dispo, no possibility to pay more than has been transfered. There are several providers with different conditions, for example Wirecard.

Same here. GOG is a reliable platform and I think its customers belong to the main target group that keeps games like BG, IWD and PsT alive. Would also pledge for releasing it on Origin, just like Wasteland 2.

Text translations are important to me. The goal should be the EFIGS or at least EFG. Russian might also be worth a thought.

For a tactical RTwP I think it is important to have the possibilty to chain multiple commands for each character (Jagged Alliance: Back in Action is really impressive in that aspect) and to have group formations just like in Baldur's Gate. A basic AI, that can handle simple actions alone and relieves the gamer from basic handlings (e.g. auto base attack for fighters, if there is no other command available), is also important. The optimum imo at the moment is Dragon Age with its feature to create several routines for your characters. If you have that features, imho RTwP is a alternative to the tactical feeling of turnbased games.