Jozape

I've never done any grinding in any Black Isle or Obsidian title before. Is there a reason you feel compelled to grind levels for unused companions? Because you will have unused companions horrendously underlevelled? Having to constantly switch out companions instead of taking who i want based on their personality or personal stake in a particular quest is what i would classify as grinding. How do you know they will be horrendously underleveled? Do you know what level each companion starts at? Do you know how many levels there are and can realistically be achieved? How much each level means in terms of each character's ability? How difficult it is to gain additional levels? And how many battles we will be forced to take? Also to consider, is that the game can be completed without picking up any companions. Having a companion or two be temporarily weaker than the others might not be such a big deal. Of course, completing the game on your own could also be ruthlessly difficult. We don't know enough yet.

I'd venture to say that introducing some slang or specialized terminology wouldn't be a bad thing at all and need not be a complete chant (I'm pretty sure PS:T had the chant, not cant). The only thing slang/terminology would affect is localization, something I favor for a larger international market... so it's down to translation cost. I don't think cant would require much jink, even with translation, cutter. Translation to other languages and what not would take up a lot more jink.

How so? All Obsidian has to allow us to do is click 'Attack' and click 'Annah'. Assuming companions are non-vital to the main plot(unlike Annah in PS:T iirc), killing them won't cause the main plot to be impossible to finish. It'll just mean one less person in the world, and possibly a few quests to be impossible to start or finish. On the other hand, it could also cause new quests to open up if Obsidian takes these killings into account. That can be done too while allowing the player to kill a companion at any time. Refrain from killing your LI(if your character is the killer) until the moment is right.

I should always be able to kill anyone, not just companions. Companions aren't forced on the player anyways, so it would be weird to not have the option of killing them without having to go through some dialog or quest.

If they survive. That's what makes it exciting! That's a fair point. On the other hand, the power curve of the game can be shallower than modern RPGs, and make additional levels exponentially harder to obtain, ensuring that nobody is too far behind the others. Especially if you're using everybody on a regular basis.

I prefer shared XP for the party, and no XP or leveling for unused companions. But I don't mind unused companions leveling all that much, as long as I get to choose their abilities when I first acquire them(assuming we can choose their upgrade path when leveling up, if not then doesn't matter). I've never done any grinding in any Black Isle or Obsidian title before. Is there a reason you feel compelled to grind levels for unused companions?

I love high quality sound. I think it adds a lot more than simply spicing up the graphics. Thinking of recently, just compare the audio of Dragon Age 2 to Dragon Age: Origins, or Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect. Both sequels had much smaller budgets for the audio, and it was obvious. Or compare Skyrim to ME2 or DA2. I hope this is doable.

Anybody that would ask Feargus that had better have one hell of an amazing IP to work with considering the popular names at Obsidian.

Indeed. They've told us that only a few lines will be voiced, so addressing the player character by name won't be an issue in PE. From GameBanshee: and again GameBanshee:

Someone voted just to spite you.

All the way back in April huh? I guess the reception of ME3 finally cracked them. Can't blame them for wanting to move on if so.

While I enjoyed Fallout 3, I wouldn't call it's level scaling even remotely subtle. But yes, definitely way better than Oblivion.

I saw it as a chance to regain the moral complexity, immersive setting and player agency of the old games that have not yet been matched in modern RPGs. Not the clunky mechanics and tedious gameplay elements. Could you actually tell us what you're arguing against? What are the features/mechanics that are clunky and tedious? What is it that you are afraid that Obsidian will do in Project Eternity?

It makes me all giddy seeing the unanimous support of features that everyone would have taken for granted over 10 years ago.

I guess you could get a wall of text, and then as a response, the PC could say "*YAWN* sorry, can you shorten that?". I think that beyond that though, it's not worth it just to try and please everyone.

The 'player housing' is meant to serve as a place for your party characters to hang out when you're not using them according to the update #2.

Agreed. I want as much acknowledgement from the world towards my character's actions as possible. Every little bit makes the world feel more credible and adds a lot of replayability, allowing me to see things through my character unspoiled. And an unspoiled experience is a stronger one.

I wonder if any code inXile has added would be useful to PE. It could work both ways down the road.

That's the best kind of research there is.

The moment when Atris confronts you with the Exile's past would have been great had I known what he did. I completely agree with Sylvius. In the future, I would like to know the important bits of my character's past and knowledge, so I can not only fully appreciate the writing, but properly role-play within the area of wiggle we're given by the writers.

I'd prefer not to know if the dialog option will succeed, or even what stat influences success. But I can ignore such indicators. I definitely want description in addition to dialog though. No reason not to have it! You can change it based on the character's perception too, if that were to be a stat.

Do you enjoy making custom content and playing it alone? I enjoy single-player content developed by Obsidian or modders alone.

Dragon Age didn't have animated portraits/moving avatars, that was Planescape: Torment. They're nice looking, but I think the portraits in BG and IWD looked much nicer, with the added ability to port our own. Custom portraits win hands down.

Didn't one of the 'Big Names' (Urqhart?) use community-developed moding tools to help add-in unfinished content in one of the IE games? David Gaider did in one of the Baldur's Gate games. I think it was Baldur's Gate 2.

From GameBanshee: And in the interview Feargus also stated that they were shying away from the Icewind Dale style create your own party style, I'm pretty sure. It's also a roleplaying game, and having multiple PCs isn't very compatible with that. Nonsense. If you can role-play 1 character, you can role-play 4 like in Wasteland. And Wasteland is one of my favorite RPGs. It is if you don't create any inter party interaction yourself. After all, they are your characters. You're supposed to be role-playing them.