WorstUsernameEver

Mass Effect 2 always felt like a bit of a "first third-person shooter for you!" game to me. The level design and the encounter design and the weapon design.. everything is okay but very very basic, and the game is too long to be supported by that gameplay (a lot of people forgive that because most of the content is optional and because of the story, I guess). Might be I should replay it though, I'm going from memory here.

Sure, but that's just, like, dialogue-writing 101? People shouldn't go out of character to give exposition.

New Vegas is chock-full of exposition. Hell, one of the most apropos criticism of its writing I've heard is that it relies too much of telling instead of showing. Which is also one of the reasons I'm not too worried about a lack of exposition in Project Eternity: he might say that, but so far, none of his work shows such a design philosophy.

I'm fairly sure that NWN2 didn't have around 120 people on its team (that's the size of Skyrim's team more or less) and I'm confused on how you reached that number. Did you count all the publisher people and testers working on it too?

Also please, don't make me feel like the world only exists as a videogame world. Incidental details and thing that go beyond the central conflict and the player quests do a great deal making me feel *~immersed~*, in a way that the first-person perspective, full voice-acting, etc. simply don't really manage.

Doesn't really sound like he wants to ban exposition to me, though I agree, that was ill-said.

Prosper does what Prosper don't.

I was about to write "Lol what" ending but then I remembered Kai Leng. KAI LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENG.

??? It is a joke... FYI. Well, this stuff is kind of difficult to get on the Internet and you're not new to controversial opinions about successful developers, so it doesn't really hurt to aks.

I actually think BioWare is the developer that best managed to cope with shifting to action mechanics. Mass Effect 3 has a lot of examples of more elegant and deeper design than the original and 2, but they were overshadowed by the "lol what?" story.

Wait, didn't BioWare do a bunch of layoffs of the DA2 team? I remember Tony Evans, for example, said he was let go from there.

"@CrackR0ckSteady suddenly, somewhere, a funcroc ****ed its head and listened for the wind to return"

We're currently running a ChipIn campaign to have an inn or a similar building of that kind in the game for the website. Obsidian recently also agreed to immortalize the names of the $50+ donators into the game (we're talking about either in a tavern or in a tombstone, so it shouldn't be anything lore or immersion breaking for people who are worried about that). So.. that's about it. If you enjoyed or enjoy our content please consider a small contribution, if you don't or you don't want/can't contribute for whatever reason, then thanks anyway, we obviously don't want people to feel like they're obligated to contribute. Thanks for the attention, anyway!

A lot of the best-known Lovecraft monsters are more or less giant sea monsters already, anyway.

From what I could find, it's actually the other way around. CD Projekt is a CD Projekt Red-owned publisher. It all gets a bit... complicated. According to Wikipedia, CDPR started out as a development studio under CDP, but after a merger with another developer, the whole thing got reorganized, so suddenly CDPR was the owner of CDP. I got confused by it all and just left it out in my original reply. Uh, okay, I admit I didn't know about it. I'll look into that later, but it does sound really weird. (Though it doesn't really change the fact that it's more or less the same honchos.)

Yes, I am on board with this idea entirely, although I didn't love the Baldur's Gate narrator. It'd be cool if, at some point, they reveal the identity of the narrator in some manner, too. Without giving away spoilers, that kind of "revealing the identity of the narrator" thing was done in Mask of the Betrayer and, if I recall correctly by what I read (haven't had the chance to play it yet ) in Icewind Dale.

Italy, Europe.

Prepare yourself for the worst boss ever soon, Drudanae.

Not Victorian and Fallout-y enough. But there are points of contact here and there, at least from what we've heard so far. Hopefully the character system, journal, etc. will learn some lessons from Arcanum (but with the wisdom of not trying to do everything at the same time like that game).

???

You can have an almost peaceful playthrough in Planescape, but pretty much all the resources spent on the dialogue/writing went at the expense of solid combat mechanics in that game. I've never played Darklands, but it's not really an IE-like game, so it's not an apt. comparison.

I don't think I've ever heard anything from Bear McCreary that I don't like. Also, agreed on all counts!

Not really, the follow-up is like.. a couple of comments afterwards in the same day. A lot, and I mean, a lot of publications just decided to completely ignore it.

While the game necessarily will have a different, probably slightly more combat-oriented flow due to the party mechanics, I think Fallout 2 is a good place to look at in terms of pacing, multiple quest solutions, etc. Arcanum also had a bunch of great quests, though a lot of them felt a little filler-y. It did one thing very well though, and that was offering you multiple solutions without necessary putting them all in your face. I'm not expecting to be able to complete the game as a pacifist, or anything like that because of the party/IE focus. But I would like to be provided with quest design that is a little more multifaceted and varied than Baldur's Gate 2.

Just don't put an entire skill/skill tree dedicated to finding them and disabling them, please *. That's almost never interesting gameplay-wise, and often feels like an excuse to make you waste points. IIRC Fallout 3/New Vegas tie traps into repair, and that was a good choice imo. * I'm referring to a traditional implementation of traps, a-là IE titles/Fallout/Arcanum. If Obsidian can think of a more interesting way to implement them, I'm all ears.