FlintlockJazz

Finding the tanner there is a moment that has stuck with me, I was so not expecting to resolve that quest there! Trademeet was such a strange discovery, it was a like it's own mini-campaign hidden within the game that you could totally miss yet once found felt kinda integral to the whole experience. To me anyway.

Talking I second this. Maybe I'm odd, but one of my favourite places in BG2 is Trademeet. It was technically just a town but it had multiple quests leading to it, that would then get you connected to the other quests when you got there, and other quests that would bring you back there later. Resolving it's main plotlines and getting the statues of your party felt like a completion in itself, giving you a sense of accomplishment while still being able to "move on to the next town" as a tabletop adventuring party.

I only played a couple of hours of it myself, due to time constraints at the time. But maybe the concentration focused on it as the beta and the feedback they got as they were developing it helped it? If only to make them spend more time than usual on it. Or maybe it just meant they had to rush develop it more and just got lucky.

I gotta say, something about Dyrford really did click for me too. Maybe it was the first place in the beta, maybe it just felt like the epitome 'fantasy village adventurers arrive at', maybe because the quests in it were joined together rather well in its own mini-campaign that was separate from the main plotline, giving a nice break of 'local troubles' to deal with. Stalwart too was like this and clicked right for me. You get a sense of the place and the stories intermingle well. Maybe what cities need is to treat each 'district' of a city as it's own hub? Just a random thought.

How else would you know it was an orlan?

Tim and Leonard are not involved in Bloodlines 2. I think Leonard did art on Bloodlines and I think Tim was a programmer. Brian Mitsoda wrote most (all?) of Bloodlines and he is back in a similar role for Bloodlines 2. MCA wasn't involved in Bloodlines at all. No idea about the WoD stuff. Regarding the WoD stuff, it will most likely be based on the new old WoD. Yep, new old. Basically, White Wolf originally ended the old WoD (called oWoD) and created new WoD (nWoD). nWoD was more goth, less punk pretty much. Power and scale of everything was reduced, streamlined etc, very different setting (and more coherent across the lines) with humans being the default characters in the core rulebook and you then applied the template of the creature you wanted on top (werewolf, vampire, mage etc) from the sourcebooks for that race. As with any new thing, many people rejected it and did not like it, I personally did like it but could understand some of the problems people had with it (while noticing that those people never applied the same scrutiny to the oWoD but I digress). White Wolf got bought up by the Eve Online guys who pretty much just sat on it let it rot while the staff pulled an Obsidian and ran off to form Onyx Path, who White Wolf outsourced the tabletop WoD stuff to. Then Paradox bought White Wolf and wanted to bring back the oWoD. They renamed nWoD Chronicles of Darkness instead, and remade oWoD. There was then lots of issues apparently but I have not followed the situation for years so have no idea about all that. So basically, current WoD is a remake of old WoD and new WoD has been turned into a spinoff.

Or cutscenes in DAO that took your entire party away from the positions you had carefully picked to put them all (including your stealthy rogue) right in the middle of the fray. That! That very thing summed up the attitude behind DA that did it in for me. The Zevran encounter killed it for me: oh look some random person in the middle of no one has come screaming for help and then legged it off refusing to explain what is going on expecting us to follow her to a group stood around a wagon. I think I'll hold back and assess the situation. Oh look, I can SEE traps lying all over the place. Don't need Admiral Ackbar to tell me what this is. *Sends rogue to disarm nearest trap* *Instead triggers cutscene of character running straight into trap, with villains cackling over their ingenuity while I am sat there thinking this is bull***** *After trap, get lectured about falliing for traps* Bioware's attitude has always been: "Screw your roleplaying we have a STORY we want to tell and you WILL play it out exactly how we want it, even when it requires total stupidity on your behalf and contrived bollocks! Oh and then we will lecture you on the things we forced you to do!" Made even worse by the fact that their stories were not that clever to warrant it...

He's saying the game they are working on is called Top Secret.

You guys actually all get the Christmas week off? Lucky bastards... (writing this from the office in work).

There actually isn’t. Like not even the little. We have isometrics to choose from for now, and phrase “Baldur’s Gate3” worries me. I got over it and got re-married couple times already. Not you are claiming to resurrect my first wife, but she is also not my first, and expect me to be excited about it. 18 years ago I would. Now I sit with a shotgun on my porch and suspiciously watch what this abomination will do. One second thought, this analogy doesn’t really work. I agree with this and actually think the "produce" that Beamdog is churning out like the "enhanced" editions and Siege of Dragonspear are actually stifling the genre. Baldur's Gate is finished, it was completed, let it lie. There are other games now, and if the genre is to survive and grow we need to be nurturing them instead.

I knew the moment I heard there was to be no romances that this thread would be here and that it would be the longest thread in the Outer Worlds' forum.

Was wondering that myself!

I just wish you could point that out to him at some point or it gets raised that his 'pirating' is actually rubbish and moronic. And yeah, and now InsaneCommander mentions it, Bleak Walkers actually follow pirate logic! That makes them cool...

Worst as in just really really bad at being a pirate. This is something that has been gnawing at me since the game came out and I need to get it out. Being feared as a pirate was an important part of being a pirate, but that was to make things easier. Pirates traditionally would give their prey a chance to surrender, if they did then they would take all their stuff but leave them alive. If they didn't they gave no quarter and butchered every single person. This was simple logic: if people knew that resistance would get them killed but rolling over let them keep their lives then they would roll over, the pirates were not after bloodshed but profit and having to fight even when they knew they had the overwhelming advantage still carried risk they would rather avoid. It was so that they could be lazy and not have to chase down their prey or fight to board them. They would raise a flag demanding surrender, if the prey tried to flee or fight then they would switch to no quarter. Fear of the consequences and knowledge that they would be spared caused many crews whose captain tried to order them to fight back to mutiny and hand the ship and captain over to the pirates, and many sailors often defected to the pirate crew when boarded, giving them more manpower. By making your foe know that if they surrender they will still be raped and murdered then you gave them no reason to surrender and all the reason to fight to the bitter end, and to make sure you paid as much as they could while deprieving you of the loot just to spite you. You want fear, but also a 'way out' for your foes to take that make things easier for you. Benweth does none of this: "Leave none alive lads!" not only sounds like a twatty teen trying to be dark but is just stupid. Benweth, you are a crap pirate, I kill you horribly every time. His men would have turned on him a long time ago regardless of how well he treats them simply because he put their lives at risk with his crap pirating. TL;DR: Benweth is a ****ing idiot, ****, and crap pirate.

:-D Well, that answers that. Good question though. Well, obviously its built on a game engine that exists rather than an imaginary one and that it is also a new game engine! Right? I don't think that is really what he meant actually.

You know what I find most interesting in that? That he mentions he is a running a tabletop campaign set in Eora. Shows that they actually are tabletop RPG enthusiasts doing what they enjoy. They made the Pillars something even they would play in.

I have a PS4. It currently gathers dust and I plan on giving it to my nieces who will get more out of it. I prefer to play on PC for my own reasons and there just isn't enough exclusives to warrant buying consoles and I just don't like playing on them. Plenty of games out there anyway to play that I don't need to get consoles for more games, just don't have the time to play the ones I got. Dunno why this is even being discussed though as they won't be Xbox exclusive anyway as MS still releases the games on PC as well.

Hmm I wonder how this will affect the updates for Deadfire?

So what do people reckon will happen with Fig now then considering that those who were owning and running it are now working for MS? Doubt people will view positively a big publisher trying to get them to back their games...

Are people still just arguing about stores? Lets focus on the important news people (Obsidian being bought)! Monopolies is bad I think we can all agree, Microsoft using it's position as the OS developer to lock itself into the only store to buy from a la Apple's Appstore is bad, Steam being the only digital distributor is bad, neither of those scenarios work in the best interests of the consumer. Though at least we can say that Valve is the most neutral since it doesn't develop games that it restricts to only its platform... hang on didn't they use to make games...?

Well, congratulations I hope. Unless this was a sudden aggressive takeover in which case damn. I hope you all understand that I will be watching very carefully from now on, thought Bioware would stay the same after being bought by EA and we all know how that turned out, so a bit wary to be honest. Hope it will be to the benefit of all, though I won't be buying anything on Windows Store and so hope you keep selling on GOG and Steam. Both InXile and Obsidian being bought up at the same time? Either its Microsoft giving good deals to the pair of them and them working together somehow helped or they both got caught out by something (pretty sure I recall it being corporate shenanigans resulting in Bioware being bought by EA not Bioware actually choosing to sell out, but we'll never know for sure). Whats gonna happen with Fig now though? I can't see them still running things on there while being owned by massively funded company like Microsoft...

Look at most open world games with a main plotline, you will see similar. Why would the Dovahkin blow off dealing with the dragons that are ravaging the countryside to go do mage college stuff? Why would the protagonist in Baldur's Gate 2 stop trying to rescue his friend or reclaim his soul to go do all the side quests you stumble across? It seems to be a problem with making the player engage with and be interested in the main plotline to not just ditch it while also giving free reign to choose as they like. Its a contradiction that many developers seem to struggle with, so it seems to be harder than it appears. Anyway, I like Deadfire, I am enjoying it. No game will ever be perfect for anyone unless it is specifically tailored to that person, and then it will probably only appeal to them. It's made my list of great games, so nyeh to everyone. Nyeh!

Even if you consider Deadfire's writing bad for Obsidian due to the open worldness and all that, its still better than any writing from Bioware or Bethesda. Though to be fair, that's not hard.

HK-47 was ****. I seriously don't get the love for the guy, he just called people meatbags and somehow that is funny. Minsc was funny because he was constantly breaking the forth wall and in BG there wasn't much other dialogue, and many people didn't like that.

The rest is where the work is. The work for a sidekick is miniscule compared to the work needed for a full companion, its the reputation system not just with the main character but with the other characters that does it, the links between not just the main character but the other party members, how they will react to her comments and her to their's (increasing the work needed for the other companions too, which is why it got more expensive per companion the more companions they added). Sidekicks were done precisely because they were easy to do in comparison to full companions, and why we got four of them with just one stretch goal. Not to say it can't or won't be done, but the workload isn't really reduced by having her as a sidekick already and is a lot more than you seem to think it involves.