AGX-17

This. There could be mercenaries, who want to take a share of the gold but otherwise do your every bidding, and others who are in for the ride/ quest goal but can be upset/ get up and leave if you don't display competent leadership. edit: but gize I'm p. sure we aren't talking about P:E here anyway because in that as we know you can just create your own mindless goons through the Adventurer's Hall. The thing about mercenaries is that they'll bolt when things get rough. They might even steal from you while running away from a fight that isn't going well. Mercenaries only care about themselves, they're not the type to act as human shields.

You have missed the point entirely. OP isn't referring to taking notes, OP is referring to a stat/performance-tracking system (i.e. most damage dealt in a single attack, who has made the most kills, how many points of healing you've done over the span of the game, etc.) which is pretty standard in gamin these days (F3 and NV had it, all of the GTA games post-GTA3, etc.)

I could not give less ****s. If you want to go the "first year, first term graphic design student" route you could go blue and orange.

I just backed it at the $45 level since I didn't back Wasteland 2 and it adds a free copy of Wasteland 2. How shameless.

Once again, P:E has already been described by Obsidian as eschewing the concept of black & white morality sliding scales/D&D alignment matrices. Evil is subjective, most people who do evil things don't believe they're evil. Most individual acts of "evil" are typically driven by selfishness and, yes, a sociopathic lack of empathy. In the case of the Nazis, most of them were reticent and often even offput/disgusted by what they were doing, but they had been convinced by their superiors that it was for a greater good, which is a major factor in real-world acts of mass-scale, organized "evil," as has been found in psychological studies. Another example: South African men who gangrape lesbians to "correct" them and "make them straight" believe they are the good guys, because the bible says homosexuality is bad, and rapists typically believe themselves to be entitled to have any woman they want. Real world examples, note that while the rapists interviewed don't see themselves as doing anything wrong, at the same time, they wouldn't want their female family members to be raped: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2013/03/201335205155725918.html

Al Gore sigh. ...Updates. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts

You should play Morrowind too. The main villain in that game is pretty awesome, and the story in general is pretty good imo. You should also try Daggerfall which has a different feel to it, it's more about mindless fun and dungeon crawling, but the story is pretty interesting there too. I've only heard good things about Redguard and Battlespire too, though I have not played those. Keeping in mind that Morrowind was the end of Bethesda's good main storyline/writing days. The well-written quests and characters in F3 were few and far between, the main storyline was garbage for the most part. The thing that Bethesda excels at is level/area design (in F3, not so true of Skyrim or Oblivion,) exploration and atmosphere, that was what made F3 great.

Fallout 3 was entirely desert, except for Point Lookout. NV was a more accurate (and more varied, it had Mt. Charleston, which contrary to popular belief among F3 fanboys, is a real mountain that has real snow and real trees, in reality,) depiction of the environment 200+ years after nuclear war. You didn't play Fallout or Fallout 2, did you? There were farms and high-tech cities and forests in it. I wonder if you've ever been to California, it has forests, too. And Fallout started on the West coast. The only areas in which F3 is better than NV is in terms of world/level design and atmosphere. It was barely less buggy than NV on release, and it's Bethesda's own engine. And Bethesda did QA for NV. Most of the instability in NV is due to the larger number of NPCs and the increased complexity of quests. I still get as many CTDs in F3 as I do in NV on a core i5 2500k/16gb RAM/geForce gtc 560 ti (1gb) gaming rig. New Vegas's writing is leagues better, quests are generally vastly better, story is significantly better (F3 had a single, irritating, railroad plot that locked out any real concept of RPing, whose only variables were to not pursue it or to make some cheap tacked-on choices at the end, no ending slides detailing the aftermath like in F1, 2, and NV, etc.) adherence to/knowledge of Fallout lore/canon is (of course,) better, combat is better, levelling system is better. The ideal scenario is a game world constructed by Bethesda for gameplay, story and quests designed and written by Obsidian.

...Ignoring, as usual, my belief that the entire concept of a "thieves' guild" is ridiculous, why would these "craftmasters" be part of a "thieves' guild" and not a "crafting guild"? Why would lay craftsmen be capable of creating magic kitsch that teleports "home" at the end of the day? Isn't that, what do they call it.... an en...chantment? Oh, great. Double post, again. Good thing these things can't be deleted!

Isn't your anti-disease incense burner going to require incense ammo to burn? Isn't it the incense that matters, then?

Now that you've pointed that one word out.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/indiana-tomb-raider.php ANYWAY: Here's how you know you're on the losing team in TF2: http://s12.postimage.org/fg6egyorx/snipers.jpg

"Make it like all the old games I loved, but better!" has been said in text, spoken word and money in regard to P:E (pretty sure that's why we all backed it, right?)

Alexjh, while I would be inclined to agree with you, I have toured Obsidian's studio twice, and I've seen their mocap room I'm also friends with a few people there, just not anyone on the P.E. team. And I'm very aware of the dramatic flare added to movements, but I can tell you that by following the correct movements, it actually makes the combat look more interesting and flow together much better. There is a well written article in this issue of Game Developer magazine talking about it, with a compelling argument for why game developers should consider it. I wouldn't usually ask a developer to consider this, but I really like Obsidian, they've done a lot for me as a student, and I would like to give back while making a game better. Then why are you posting on the forums and not contacting your "friends" at Obsidian about this? "If" being the operative term here. Considering the OP's claim to have "friends" at Obsidian, his choice to make this proposal on the forums makes that claim questionable at best. There was no apparent motion-captured animation in NV and they likely had a close to AAA budget for that. I find it highly unlikely that the OP has toured their offices, that Obsidian has their own motion capture studio, or that he is "friends" with multiple (or any,) Obsidian employees. If any of this were true he would have to be exceptionally mentally disabled to choose to post on the forums effectively anonymously rather than using direct lines of communication to his "friends."

Read. Updates. Please. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/339083 Relevant information bolded by me. It has also already been confirmed that P:E will use a Damage Threshold system like New Vegas. No multiplicative damage resistance.

No, kickstarter is not a charitable organization, it's a middle-man/go-between. Infrastructure. Obsidian is a for-profit private company. You are not engaging in charity. You essentially made an advance pre-payment (if you donated,) for a good or service you will receive in the future. That is not charity by any reasonably definition.

Yeah, God is a Randian Capitalist, that's why Jesus said that only a rich man can get into heaven through the eye of a needle and to hoard as much material wealth as possible and spit on lepers and the poor. Chavez was also consistently elected in internationally monitored/recognized elections considered free and fair by those international standards. Yes, he was a demagogue, but he actually did do a great deal to improve the lives of the poor in Venezuela, and that's why he so consistently got elected. The brief right-wing coup that lasted a matter of days did nothing but bolster support for Chavez. The capitalist/right wing faction is a decidedly small minority in the country. And one can hardly accuse him of creating an authoritarian dictatorship or something along those lines as crime is rampant in Venezuela, one interviewee on a BBC World Service report on the subject of his death mentioned that he (the interviewee) had to move his elderly father (an ardent Chavismo supporter,) to Colombia where it's safer than Caracas, Venezuela.

...Real boomerangs, as in the weapon type, did not come back, they either clobbered a critter on the head or they missed and ended up on the ground. Unless it's some ultimate magic indestructible arrow enchanted with "the Unstoppable Force" it can't possibly return to the shooter. Also how is the shooter supposed to catch it? It's got the Unstoppable Force, meaning nothing can stop it once loosed. Since it's the ultimate magic indestructible arrow it will kill the shooter then fly through the world/ground and end up in space or the ether or what-have-you if P:E takes place on a planet. If it's some flat world existing in its own tiny self-contained bubble universe it would cause some kind of metaphysical paradox and pierce the universe or come out the other side and make that location a permanent death trap.

A rapier should have increased armor penetration vs light/medium armored enemies and increased critical chance vs. light or unarmored enemies, rather than a blanket increase in critical chance. Maybe it could do increased critical damage if you successfully crit a heavily armored foe, but it should be essentially useless in terms of normal hits vs heavy armor. A rapier flat out can't penetrate steel plate armor. Rapiers and smallswords didn't emerge until heavy plate armor was made obsolete by firearms, and were made primarily for dueling, which didn't typically involve the use of armor.

What about an attractive lover who will murder you (literally) with a 100% instant death to all party members attack if you fail to defeat her (or him) within the battle's time limit like in Persona 4? I don't think any real boss should be "quite easy." What makes them a boss if they're easy? You can get pulverized by normal enemies in an IE game if you don't know what you're doing/employ poor tactics, or if you just get shafted by the D20 RNG. Unless you're significantly higher level than the boss it shouldn't be "easy." They usually involve unique/overpowered gear as loot. Also it's "if the boss isn't connected to the story." If the boss isn't disconnected from the story, then it's a part of the story, not just a quest quest with a hard boss.

They aren't. The US DoD, for example, and most similar organizations, use internal networks that aren't connected to the internet/WWW. I heard in an NPR interview on the subject of stuxnet that the most likely way it got into the Iranian system is through a USB/flash drive. Either they actually obtain one belonging to someone with regular access to the network and put the virus or trojan on it, or they just drop one in a place where someone with security clearance might find it, and stick it in attempting to see whose it is/what's on it. A less likely scenario is actual agents infiltrating the organization/operation and doing it personally.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21651225 Eh, no biggie. But kind of interesting trivia.

Waiting for obyknven to jump in with a picture of anti-American propaganda, a claim that " 'NO AMERICA, YOU ARE THE DEMONS' AND THEN AMERICA WAS A ZOMBIE.' "

You would think. Until you read the title of the game and the name of the developer and publisher. ZIIIING! Nobody knows what it's going to be, so...

I found Honest Hearts to be the most enjoyable DLC, even though the story was kind of weak. The character writing for the non-tribals was great and its environment is a refreshing change. And then there's also the loot. I don't see why you would skip content that's there just because it's not obviously part of MCA's (come on, man, you're better than this!) retcon of the Courier's past/origins. The logic problems surrounding the tribals (you'll notice it when you read the latter of the much acclaimed survivalist's diaries,) in HH still pale in comparison to LR's inane re-writing of your own character's past.