Leferd

Since the PAX thread got derailed, may as well post this here. it's pretty impressive that the Pillars of Eternity presentation got such a packed house. Hopefully that's a good sign for the anticipation/demand for the game. From Sawyer's twitter:

Agreed. It's nothing like this one. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69669-california-likes-to-panic-over-a-little-rain/?hl=storm

Grommie moved? He's West Side. Not New York. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8

Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut) is my favorite movie.

http://www.xp4t.com/interview-with-the-devs-chris-avellone/ Interesting conversation all around regarding the video game writing process. Towards the end, MCA discusses two of the companions he concepted - Durance (Priest of Magran) and The Grieving Mother (Cipher). Excerpted below: JONAS: Any particular design ideas or concepts that you’re obsessed with right now? Anything you’re particularly excited about in one of your current projects, or particularly determined to find a way to use in a future project? (I promise I won’t steal it, we probably don’t have the budget for it anyway.) CHRIS: A few, I suppose. At a high level, this may be shooting myself in the foot, but I’ve become increasingly interested in narratives without words, especially after New Vegas (where prop placement told better stories, imo). At a specific level, in Eternity, the original premise of the companions I wrote (Durance and the Grieving Mother) was unpeeling the layers and discovering what they were at the core – unpeeling these layers involved slipping stealthily into their unconscious, a dungeon made out of their memories. There, the player could go through an adventure game-like series of interactions, exploring their memories using psychological items important to both your character and to them as emotional keys to thread your way through the memories – but carefully, without revealing your presence. The memory dungeon was to uncover their shared history, how it impacted you, and the core of who they were as people. And their core was pretty unpleasant. Both of them were very bad, very weak people, committing not only violations on each other, but on the player as well. When faced with the discovery that your allies, even if they fiercely support you and fight for a larger cause, have some pretty horrid faults, what do you do? Do you pass sentence? Do you forgive? Do you assist them to reach an understanding? And what I found more interesting with the spiritual physics in the Eternity world is that a death sentence isn’t a sentence – killing someone actually sets a soul free to move on to the next generation. So if you intend to punish someone in a world like that, either out of revenge or to correct their behavior, how do you do it when execution is not an answer? The elements above got stripped out of the companions in the end, so I’m happy to share it here (and I may re-examine it in the future). Overall, I thought they raised interesting questions for the player to chew on, and it was interesting to explore those themes, as most game narratives and franchises wouldn’t allow for such examinations – still, Eternity was intended to be a more personal project for Obsidian where we can stretch our narrative legs more, both in structure and themes. Chris had revealed this bit of info before, but went more in depth. This was ultimately cut due to what I'm gathering was lack of resources and not being a primary gameplay driver. Cool idea and I hope it is eventually pursued in future projects --or even the expansion. Now before this devolves into a Josh is the Antichrist of FUN for chopping this idea, lets try to be atlea---Who am I kidding?? Have at it.

I don't consider grognard to have negative connotations. To me it's a term for wargamers or those who are tactical combat enthusiasts. I'd like to consider myself one --though albeit at the JV level.

Terminator - Awesome Aliens - Totally Awesome T2 - Beyond Awesome Then this: http://youtu.be/8tuvz_9D7Ok Yep. Solidifies it. The man can do no wrong.

Totally, the best. Helping others, sharing ... if Green Shirt Girl needs help crossing Alton Parkway or ordering sushi, I am totally available. Ponders fine line as to whether ManifestedISO is a creepy misogynistic nerd or whether he's a smooth playa. Leaning towards he got game. Lols.

Sarex brings up a good point. There may be a cultural disconnect as it relates to what the dichotomy is between what is considered civil/heated/aggressive. We have Australians, Serbs, Germans, Dutch, Brits, Koreans, Africans, Americans, etc., Hell, even the dispositions of New Yorkers would be different from Iowans and Californians. Each have different life experiences and varying levels of conflict. What is normal to an Aussi may be blunt to a Californian. What is tactful to a Londoner is groveling to someone from Belgrade. Most of us are fans of Obsidian and want them to succeed and each has their own agenda as to their ideas for what makes a worthy IE successor. Thanks for the perspective and reminder Sarex --that we are an international community. OK. Enough pandering to the Kumbaya crowd....

PAX thread. In fact, Indira and Nonek should apologize to me for its demise.

It's not nearly to the BSN level either. And definitely not to the Bethsoft forum level. Relatively speaking, these forums are as civil as gaming forums can ever be. The echo chamber ideal some of you seem to be seeking is just as unhealthy as it is unattainable. And you wouldn't want it anyway, whether you think you do or not. If you're here, then that means you're a GAMER, and gamers are competitive by definition. Thus a forum filled with nothing but quiet, peaceful agreement will bore any gamer away rather quickly. Your opinion. I like Internet drama just as much as anyone but a line is crossed if the general feeling among the Devs is that the forums have become too uncomfortable to their taste to engage with their fans --some reflections have to be made. There's plenty of trolls here --and that's fine and actually pretty entertaining, but I've avoided posting in many good legitimate topics because I don't want to get drawn into a flame war --of which you specifically seem to be embroiled in quite often due to your particularly inflammatory posting style. I actually agree with some of your sentiments but you need to take down the aggressiveness a notch, if you want some of the devs or other posters to be comfortable enough to chime in.

@caesar It's not nearly to the Codexian level - and even there lots of it is in good fun, but here there has been growing nastiness whether it's passive aggressive or directed. And that's not good fun.

In normal behavior, when one is either directly or indirectly bad mouthed, the normal response would be to either to dish it back out and engage or walk away. Those that are non-confrontational in nature would be more likely to walk away and disengage from discussion rather than participate. See what's happening here? *edit* looks like the post I was responding to was disappeared.

Josh Sawyer interview.

I've always been fond of Carlos the Dwarf myself.

Yeah. That would be a nifty option. I Doubt they'll be implementing it for release. Maybe in a future patch or in the expansion?

I'm just glad that Lawrence Kasdan is involved with the script.

Another entry: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Aedyran_Dialects

The Pillars of Eternity wiki is probably the best place for it. You can also try asking Josh Sawyer specific questions directly on his tumblr. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Aedyran http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/

What's there to state that they didn't cover in their last update? Their feature set is essentially on lockdown and they are working on getting the game released in two months. After the next beta release, I'd rather they concentrate their resources on getting the game polished as best they can. Their next KS update should have information on reward redemptions.

Referring to me then. *looks up hyperbole* Fine...substitute toxic with antagonistic.

This is simply untrue, especially when we're talking about the guys who make up Obsidian. I was *there* on the Black Isle/Interplay forums when they were developing Icewind Dale 2. I was *part* of the community that begged Josh & Co. to implement Deity-based Cleric domains (which they ended up putting in at the last minute thanks to our forum feedback, for example). There's very little that's truly new here, and NOTHING has changed in Chris Avellone's public communication.... except maybe he's communicating even LESS now. I was there too Yrkoon. Josh was pretty active back then, but it's not like Josh and Obsidian as a whole are shut ins and that they are not taking our feedback and doing with it as they wish.

It is a mysterious mystery What a waste of a perfectly good softball toss. The proper Black Isle/Obsidian response would be: It is...a mystary!

These boards were at its most vitriolic state immediately after the release of KotOR 2 and it got so bad that Feargus was very close to closing the forums. Avellone was actually pretty active (along with Rich Taylor aka Akari) during this time and he had to take the heat (and never placed the blame on LucasArts) for the ending of KotOR 2. There was this one especially *touched* poster who kept on ragging the guy for the art design of the Basilisk War Droid. I don't think Chris ever fully recovered after that experience and stopped posting regularly. But lets not say that Chris has completely shut himself off to the community or with community interaction. He regularly attends conventions, grants interviews, responds to emails, and is quite active on twitter. He's even solicited kickstarter feedback directly on these boards. http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1-chris-avellones-blog/

Instructions on how to make your own: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66894-how-to-make-custom-portraits/ Also, Tartanyco compiled portrait packs from the BG and IWD series as well. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67705-icewind-dale-2-portraits-for-pillars-of-eternity/