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Voted #3 accidentally, I meant to pick #2 for obvious reasons. Blame me for posting while half-asleep. Except, aside from the endgame, party members just occupied a sort of "zero space" location where they would somehow gain XP for doing nothing and wouldn't react to anything in the game world. Defile the most holy relic of the Chantry? No worries, if Leliana isn't with you I guess she doesn't care and she'll never find out. It's utterly immersion-breaking to be able to pull party members out of your ass in the most far-off, dangerous locations of the world without so much as an explanation. I can buy it in the cities and towns because maybe they're all hanging out... somewhere, but in dungeons, random encounters etc. it often let you do it as well and it made just as little sense. And, being able to bypass important party events by hand-picking who you take with you and when kind of defeats the whole point of the influence system in the first place.

Nice poll. I want more races and classes because I want Project Eternity to be a robust RPG not just in terms of story (which it no doubt will be) but also in terms of gameplay, and usually with RPGs, moar = better in this respect provided someone smart is at the help designing them. Plus, more options tends to lead to more replayability, though considering Project Eternity won't have full party creation that might not be as big a concern. Secondary goal is a larger world with more quests, then comes mod tools, which would both be excellent.

I don't mind firearms in the least. We don't even know what form they will take in Project Eternity - cannons? magic wands? seals that suck souls out of enemies? It's too early to just say "no guns, period" considering we know next to nothing about the universe. Besides, we already know that the game won't take place in a typical generic fantasy world... there should be no problem with doing something different.

Slang etc. is awesome, but I think Planescape's may have been a bit overdone. It worked there because you could eventually pick up everything and the cant was basically taken from an outside source, but for the Eternity universe I think any sort of slang needs to stem naturally from the game world to be meaningful. In other words, do it if it makes sense, not just "because Planescape did it."

Because playing dress-up is a big priority in a top-down perspective game where your on-screen characters are far away enough from the camera that visual details on them are almost indistinguishable.

Dialogue with descriptions all the way. You need descriptions in a text-based game at some point of course, might as well use them everywhere to liven things up. Just be sure not to make things overlong - as much as I love Planescape, sometimes the game was unnecessarily long-winded, especially with unimportant NPCs. Skill checks are a different story. I think that if a given dialogue line is something that the player could only know if he/she possessed a degree of knowledge or skill, it should always be visible and always work. On the other hand, if a line is meant to be persuasive or deceptive, it should have a percentage chance associated with it. This reflects the fact that people can use knowledge or skill to persuade others, but of course can't speak about certain things without that knowledge or skill. In general I am in favour of skill tags showing up, but not percentage chances for success. It should already be obvious based on the text whether I won or lost a check. In order to make it a bit more clear if the player can succeed or not, perhaps a skill check could be removed if the player has a less than 10-20% chance of passing, just to simulate the fact that you still need a base level of acuity to be able to make an attempt in the first place.

Agreed. I want to fight enemies that have the same abilities that my party does, the same stats, the same gear. I want to overcome them through superior tactics and planning, not because the enemy has a -50% damage modifier that lets me power through everything and win just because I am a human. Even small groups should be a threat provided they are of similar level to the player's party - none of the usual steamrolling through waves of monsters. Keep encounters smaller, more focused, and more memorable, instead of the lazy modern approach of dropping in groups of 5 generic mobs every 20 feet. I do think it's okay to have trash mobs, weaker enemies, stronger bosses, etc. of course. You need those for variety, otherwise combat becomes monotonous and has little rhythm to it. You need weak enemies and strong enemies to provide contrast to the player and give a yard stick as to how well he/she is doing, just as you need both complicated and lengthy quests with C&C as well as fetch quests that can be completed in 2 minutes. RE: friendly fire etc. - do it like Dragon Age. Turn it off on easy difficulty, make it 50% effective on normal, and 100% effective on hard. Could do the same for damage, resistances, etc. as well for players who don't want to have to play perfectly to win.

Pathfinding is my number once concern. God that was terrible. As much as I like those games, going back to them can be a test of patience. It's not quite engine-related, but I'd like to see slightly more grid-based levels in Eternity. Infinity Engine had an issue with smaller and more complicated environments where it wasn't always clear whether a path was open or blocked, and if there was line of sight. Characters would also rarely re-position ideally, instead storming around corners rather than taking two steps to the left. That kind of thing needs to be improved... not necessarily looking for a firm, square grid, but something a bit more measured and predictable to navigate.

In a game with pre-rendered 2D backgrounds? No, I can't think of any other purpose.

I'm only in favour of babies if it means that we can sacrifice them to dark gods in exchange for powers untold. Preferably right in front of their mothers, who are then disembowled and strung up by their own entrails and forced to bear dying witness to the rebirth of Hell incarnate. What can I say, I'm a family man. In all seriousness, I am highly opposed to child-rearing in games, much like romance, unless it has some significant bearing on the story. Including romances, children, etc. for LARPing needs is silly and takes precious resources away from other aspects of development, like creating more lore, quests, and so on. While this sort of thing can be handled well (i.e. political strategy meta-game where you raise a noble family of your own within a castle), I think in general this sort of thing is contradictory to the spirit of most RPGs, and especially the "adventuring around the world" stuff that serves as their foundation in most cases. Again, if it makes sense in the context of the story, and can be made into an interesting gameplay element, then I'm all for it. But I don't want Obsidian bending over backwards to include child-rearing for no other reason than a few players want to live out their fantasies in-game. There are other titles out there that allow them to do it much better already.

Screw dwarves, I want a game where halflings are the dominant race.

Actually, the Obsidian Kickstarter idea has been floating around internally for at least six months, if not longer. Buck from GameBanshee spoke with Feargus directly about making an Infinity Engine-style game at least around 2010. Obsidian has also been trying to get the rights to Icewind Dale for many years past now. But yeah, I guess legendary RPG developers like Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer and Tim Cain have just run out of ideas and need to draw "inspiration" from such talented individuals as Trent Oster. Shame on them!

Can we just have an RPG that is focused on game mechanics, story and atmosphere, and not dedicated to dressing up your characters and making them look "badass" or "sexy"? You can always play dress-up in Skyrim if you want.

Crossroad Keep was the basis of half of Neverwinter Nights 2 and was its own little mini-game all in itself. It was integral to the story and had a lot of useful gameplay functions too. "Player house" doesn't really cover the same ground... I'd rather not have a little log cabin with a storage chest or something. I realize they just threw this in there to appeal to the LARPing crowd, but I'd much prefer they focus their efforts on substantive content rather than gimmicky stuff.

I don't think this style of writing fits with Obsidian's trademark stuff, and besides... we all saw this feature in Fallout, it was basically useless. I could imagine them going with an Ultima VII-style conversation system (or Elder Scrolls-style), but I don't get the sense they intend that for this project at all.

It's also worth noting that voice acting has as lot of other downsides other than an increased budget. It is a logistics nightmare. Congrats, now you're dealing with thousands upon thousands more loose dialogue files, not to mention you have to find actors who fit all your characters properly. If you can't, what do you do... just get rid of the character? Change the character? The demands for making a voice-acted character are way higher. It adds to development time - getting good recordings, reviewing them, asking for revised versions, editing the clips (compression, normalizing, EQ), syncing them up with in-game text, etc. Characters who are voiced need to be written differently to come across naturally, and we expect them to communicate differently and with more subtlety. This changes the writing style, possibly negatively. Irenicus, for instance, was a character who literally was driven entirely by his actor - without that great voice he would be just another boring, one-note villain with cliche motivations. Any bad voice-acting will wreck immersion immediately. It adds potentially hundreds of megabytes to a game's file size - possibly an issue if Obsidian ever, say, decide to port the game to tablets or phones. Trust me, it's really not worth it.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking forward to adopting kids and bringing them back to my large estate where I can live with them in a completely non-creepy fashion. I mean... for immersion, of course! No, seriously, it's already done... but I never asked for this.

People donate largely because they want to pre-purchase the game, not because they want to "support Obsidian." Provided there is demand for the game beyond Obsidian's core audience, I think they'll keep receiving donations (aka preorders) for some time, especially as they announce more details and actually get some video or screenshots up. They really, really need more than just "Infinity Engine-style!" and "from that studio most mainstream gamers think can't put out a working game!" to keep interest up.

Can we maybe just not have dragons in a fantasy game? Please?

Frankly, I would much rather have extensive races and sub-races like D&D, if only for the sake of gameplay. This is a party-based game after all, I'd really like the potential for replayability beyond a few basic combinations... not to mention the potential for modders to include full party creation if the gameplay supports it in any reasonable way. While the number of classes, races etc. does not define a system, it'd be nice to have some assurance that the character system will be extensive and interesting.

If it is possible to create romances which have an integral or otherwise complimentary function to the game's storyline, I'm not opposed to them. For instance, Planescape's romances worked well because the story was driven in part by one and the others the player could pursue were an interesting parallel of either making the same old mistakes or trying to avoid them... and in the end there are no firm answers, either. But romance, aside from being a fantasy B-movie staple, really does not fit into a realistic setting where a group of adventurers spend most of the time battling for their lives. We expect it because we expect romance in just about every story thanks to the magic of marketing and target demographics, but unless there is a good reason for romance to exist in the game, I would rather it stays as far away as possible. We ask all the same questions of other plot elements that are extraneous or meandering - why do we let cheap, fanservice romance get a pass? In a nutshell - romance in a story should matter to the story. It should not be an end in and of itself. If hearing your companions call you "my dear" and giving them tender kisses warms your heart in the same way that actual, real love with another human being does, you probably have serious issues with your life and emotional state that you need to address.

I agree with all of your points. I actually don't like super-deep companions, to be honest. I appreciate them getting involved in the story and in having motivations that work with the theme or plot of the game, but beyond that I think that time required to create complicated backstories, personal quests, lengthy dialogues, influence systems etc. could all be put into improving the rest of the game. There are exceptions. I think that Neverwinter Nights 2's biggest strength was how it took the staple of D&D - adventuring parties saving the world - and put everyone under stress. There were conflicts between characters, some of them had motivations that weren't honest, and at the end of the game the influence system paid off big-time. Even though a lot of people disliked the characters in that game, and unfortunately there were a lot of things holding it back from real success, the companions were still the high point. As much as I enjoyed Mask of the Betrayer, I found myself far less interested in the main story itself precisely because all the companions seemed to be the main focus of the game, not the plot itself. A poor example of companions, to me, is Baldur's Gate. Aside from Imoen and maybe K&J, almost nobody has a good reason to follow the player around, certainly not for as long as they do. There are party members who literally just join up for no reason. Baldur's Gate II also suffers from "hey, it's the player character, everyone join up" syndrome. Perhaps that's why I enjoy Icewind Dale so much more - sure, there's no companions except the ones you make, but if the player can imagine their motivations then suddenly it becomes a non-issue. I guess the thing is, I have to care about companions for them to be worthwhile, and they can't overshadow everything else in the game at the same time. That is a very hard balance to strike, and given the choice I'd much rather go with a more complicated, interesting main quest with more passive companions, than one where the companions themselves are the focus of the game. I know that's popular these days among BioWare and even Obsidian fans, but it'd really be a nice change of pace to not have to solve everyone's daddy issues.

I think the big problem with non-combat skills comes down to the inherent difficulties in supporting multiple play-styles. Some people just want to make the most efficient death machine party, some like to role-play, some like a mix of abilities for any situation... however, creating scenarios that appeal to all types and give them all meaningful gameplay is exceptionally difficult when you can't really change things on the fly like a real DM can. Unfortunately, combat is also one of the easiest things to reliably systematize when it comes to RPG gameplay, because the rules of that aspect of gameplay are all so well defined, while so much more about non-combat is left up to the DM's interpretation. What's more, it's hard to avoid uncanny valley-type problems with non-combat options that are systematized because we expect a certain degree of realism and reactivity in other human beings (or even just living creatures in general) that is very hard to capture using rulesets. It's doable, certainly, but nobody has ever really tried in the context of an RPG... and when in doubt, developers tend to play it safe and stick with what they know works. Picking locks = easy. Deceiving enemies = not so easy. That said, a good portion of this really just comes down to laziness. There's an inherent, implicit understanding among developers and players that RPGs are combat-focused games, and as a result non-combat options tend to be exceptions rather than rules. When non-combat options do exist, they are almost inevitably simple persuasion checks rather than interesting multi-stage decisions. It is possible to do much, much more if developers decide to invest time and resources into design, writing and so forth rather than visuals and cinematics. Really, the best we can hope for is that Obsidian will keep in mind the value of being able to play a game with multiple non-combat options, and will consider them in gameplay as much as the combat stuff. The fact is that Infinity Engine and D&D-style gameplay are already heavily geared towards combat, so I doubt it will be entirely optional, but even shooting for, say, 3 different options to every significant quest would be excellent. I'd certainly be willing to put up with less gameplay overall if it made for a better game, period, and more replayability (the original Fallout is basically the ultimate example of this, in my mind).

I'd rather see fighters be made interesting by various D&D-style modes (power attack, etc.) as well as items and equipment. Potions and cool gear should be a fighter's magic, not Awesome Button abilities that let you beat down on monsters with extra DPS or stuns etc. Playing a fighter in Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, for instance, is not boring because the combat system and the equipment available have enough depth to support interesting gameplay. Meanwhile a title like Dragon Age would not have interesting gameplay for fighters unless the developers specifically include those "press 1 for moar damage" abilities that add very little to gameplay but give you the illusion of actually doing something important during combat. In other words, the only reason it "needs" all of those abilities is a) because having a fighter with no abilities and skills next to other classes would look anemic, and b) because, due to deficiencies in other aspects of combat, fighting would be dull and boring if you didn't bring mages along with you. Additionally, if you have a system which is designed to allow players to have all-fighter parties, you've done something wrong. The entire point of a party-based RPG is to give the player the option of using multiple characters with distinct strengths and weaknesses to fight together as a unit and support each other. If every class is basically capable of everything, much of the appeal of a party-based system disappears. That's not to say a game shouldn't allow for alternate methods and play-styles (wild mage, solo, insanity difficulty, etc.) but that should be an optional challenge, not a function of a combat system that makes every character equally effective. When you start getting RPGs where rogues and fighters have near-magic "skills", AoE effects, etc., you know something is wrong.

I don't want 3D graphics. They won't help a game like this, and they probably won't be cheaper to make. What I'd really love to see is highly detailed, extremely high-resolution hand-painted backdrops based off of 3D renders, but enhanced through modern shaders, animation and effects. So, running water in rivers, smoke rising from chimneys, grass and tree leaves blowing in the breeze, sun shafts, and so on. There have been a few games over the last generation that have been done entirely in 2D and have been completely stunning thanks to the advantages of modern tech - I think that such an approach would be a perfect fit for a traditional top-down RPG. There's also gameplay to consider. I think that a fixed perspective, orthographic style of projection works very well for tactical positioning in combat, and for selecting characters and enemies. With a standard 3D perspective, suddenly things like hitboxes and character selection become variable due to some objects being larger than others, and camera rotation can add to problems as well if it's implemented. Judging distance can also be more difficult in a game with with a 3D perspective, which could be an issue for targeting spells etc.