Reddie

I think this may be a reason why romances in games you've mentioned well, sucked (KOTOR had some good parts, but far from being significantly better). BioWare treats romance as fanservice, they literally throw it into their games because, well, it sells. Their fanbase largely likes it, but they do feel stupid, rushed, unnatural and forced because they do not consist an actual part of the plot. Good romances in other types of media are always parts of the story itself, and should be treated as such. So it's writing quality we are talking about here.

Yes, if I think that romance is stupid and detracts from the plot, setting or characterisation as a whole. Which is the case in 99% of video game romances I have seen. I have addressed that point. Your complaint is against romance quality, not the romance itself. I consider most of the media nowadays to be crappy, but I don't see this as argument for not making any new ones. What is soooo wrong in having Project Eternity be part of this 1%?

If you don't equate romance itself, in whatever genre or media as childish, then in fact you are counting videogames as a childish form of entertainment and romances in them get caught by extension. Which really is sad. If you don't feel embarassed about reading a book with romance subplot, why do you feel embarassed about reading in-game text with romance subplot? Because with Project Eternity being like IE isometric RPG's this is the level of presentation we are talking about.

I don't think someone asked the question: why do people don't want romances in game? When you get a book, or a movie, or any other media and it has a romance subplot - which is pretty common - are you like ewww, there's a romance here, disgusting? Do you advocate for any media in work to not have romances? Even if you have some sort of fictional work that in your opinion could do better without a romance subplot, I'm pretty sure it's about the subplot's quality and not the fact that in presents a romance. So if I take a point that good romance subplot enriches media experience in so many ways, why some people consider it so strange that I would like it in a game?

Precisely because it's a crowdfunded project, I feel that it's completely in order to expect it to be fresh and innovative. Just the sort of things Obsidian couldn't do with any big publisher. The world is new, the character stats system is new, yet I don't see you complaining that this unnecessarily drains resources and how better would be had Obsidian used something that already exists.

Well they announced they have engine ready before announcing Linux/OSX versions, so I don't think it's the case. But a compromise could have been (of course it's irrelevant now) to just modify Onyx where necessary for it to play nicely with Wine, the open source impletmentation of Windows and DirectX APIs. For example, Linux version of EVE Online client works this way.

Engine governs what is displayed. Graphics are fed to the engine to be displayed. When you have a raw graphics interface, like DirectX, it's impossible to simply take the scene and display it. A lot of so called "boilerplate" code needs to be written. Graphics engines are just this code. Notably, they can include simple rendering functions, doing all the setup necessary, or they can support various kinds of assets (jpg, png files, 3d models) to be used out of the box. This sort of things. Of course it's impossible to fully explain without going deeper

It does not, but is that an argument that there should be no attempt at one? BG2 and PS:T are some known examples of romance plots that go different than what BioWare recently fed it's fanbase with, but granted, these do fail, albeit on other aspects than over-sexualisation and fanservice.

That Unity is capable of 3D graphics does not in any way dictates that final game will be fully 3D. Unity is perfectly capable of 2D or any sort of combination between the two (2.5D). Having said that - when Obsidian first announced that the engine is ready, i thought they may be using some custom, enhanced version of GemRB.

Surprised I am not, but extrapolating BioWare's romances on every romance plot in every possible video game is still stupid. And stupidity has to be fought with, or it will spread futher

Somebody fix font colors in the left sidebar, it's completely unusable now.

C'mon - that BioWare has completely ridiculed romantic interactions in their late games doesn't mean we have to throw it away altogether. A well written, emotionally engaging and natural romance plot can add massive depth to game's story. I'm all for including romances, I trust Obsidian enough in this matter.

What's even more interesting - I can't wait to build a gun-resistant mage

I voted "Almost everything" and by that I mean approx. Torment-level. Being able to talk yourself from unnecessary fights but not from several epic battles (which you will then remember for days :3 ).

I'd be surprised if PE would not allow you to customize sex and skin colour, being spiritual successor to Ifinity engine games.

I am not arguing that it would affect my experience. I put an argument that in spite of this reasoning there are more minority groups that PC should be optionally part of, only those groups are not as demanding as LGBT, despite being probably more numerous (i am pretty sure there are more allergic people nowadays than transgender).

In fact, if the game is designed to be multiplatform from start - and it's always a good thing to decouple unnecesary dependencies - the cost of releasing it on another platfom is minimal. If Obsidian plans to port graphics engine from Direct3D to OpenGL - now that would be a lot of work. But if it's already written in OpenGL, the only thing necessary for porting is to compile source code to target platfom and write scripts dealing with platform-specific things, i.e. filesystem layout. And there are libraries for that, most popular being SDL.

Honestly, the rationale that "there has to be a transgender option or I can't relate to my PC!" is just plainly stupid. I am allergic to dust and the condition (used to) place heavy burden on my everyday life. Thus, I can't feel fully connected to my PC unless there is an option for him being allergic! This DEFINETELY needs to be represented in game, or Obsidian will discriminate against people with allergy! Now, I would like for all the LGBT folks on this forums (great you are here, I have nothing against you as a people) to rethink, why they are the only minority that wants to bend the game to "represent" them, while other minority groups - people with illness, disabilities, various kind of facial and/or body features etc. - can live without it GLADLY. And ask yourself, why your group is so often viewed as unreasonably demanding.

Animations are not really important for me, but interactivity is. However, i also count in text-based interactivity, as in reading the description of what's happening without it being animated. Even if this consists majority of all interactions, I can live with that as long as description is good (in terms of both writing and being accurate) and doesn't contradict whatever is displayed besides it.

It's a video game, not social simulator. If it makes sense for character to be of certain sexual orientation - let it be. Do not include gay and lesbians just because some people want to see their social groups represented in every media possible.

Of course, but - correct me if I'm wrong - these are digital distribution platforms for each individual publisher, so unless Obsidian becomes a division of EA (*shiver*) Project Eternity on Origin is out of question You're basically right here, but i'd like to clarify a bit. When you own a physical installer, license is assumed to be bound with it. Of course, in accordance with copyright law, this physical copy can't be multiplied, but when it is given to someone, or resold, or inherited, the license is still considered valid. That's the difference between having a licensed product and a license subscription.

DRM is a copy protection scheme, but not the other way around. As the name says, Digital Rights Management has a goal of not only "protecting" said media from being copied, but also (and perhaps most importantly nowadays) to "manage" your rights to it. Meaning that DRM tries to tie a game to a person, either by using some sort of PC signature (e.g. Starforce and other DRMs that act as an optical disk drivers) or by using online accounts, like Steam. This online DRM _would_ be acceptable for me if it was only emulating whatever I can physically do with my purchased product. But the scheme got largely abused by greedy publishers, since it enabled them not only to manage, but to limit your rights as they please. At Steam you no longer own a game, you only have a license subscription - presumably lifetime, but this could change. As such, I - unlike majority of people, I am aware of that - consider Steam one of the WORST DRM in existence. The purchase made on Steam gives me impaired product that I cannot use as I want and as my country's law gives me right to. So having a Steam-exclusive release or a release with Steamworks DRM that requires Steam anyways and forces me to agree to their TOS is completely unacceptable for me and I won't pledge a dime unless Obsidian gives a clear message here. Sorry guys, I'm sure your game will end up awesome, but I want to HAVE it, not RENT it.

Used to be In theory. The same theory applied to software used to "prove" the superiority of proprietary development model, unless open source proved it wrong. But I digress. As a counter argument: fans may have way more time to offer in product precisely because they are not constrained by paid working hours and they are, well fans - which means they like what they translate and have great knowledge of in-game world and story. The claim that fan translations are always inferior rests only on the fact that there are not enough modern translation efforts to verify it because most of the games are now localized. There is a plethora of quality fan translations in other media - TV, movies, manga. Regarding games, fans have helped translating KOTOR and I believe the localization would be of lower quality if not for their help. Wasn't it your argument that translating text only would be cheap enough for CD Projekt to do? Also, it's not at all impossible to hire voice actors and a studio funded by fan effort! Recently, Musopen project hired Czech National Philharmonic Orchestra to do a full-length album filled with classical pieces. The cost was about $10,000 and it was raised by Kickstarter. I'm sure that voice localization, given there are only little snippets voiced, would cost even less

Not true. Recently, fans have translated DLCs for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age. While I agree the quality is lower than CD Projekt's localization of Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, it's on par with their more recent localizations (i.e. Mass Effect, which received a medicore effort - not terribly bad, but not great either and certainly worse than english version). I understand your argument here is: their best translations were 2D cRPGs, so if they will receive opportunity to localize another one it'll be just as good? Regardless of the fact that Infinity games just happen to all be from before a decade. And which has absolutely nothing to do of whether CD Projekt will localize this game or not.

I hate DLCs with a passion. Not for what content they individually offer, but what they represent as a whole: tiny chunks of game with totally inadequate price. Even if Project Eternity's DLC would not be like that, it would still be an endorsment of this practice. So, even if it gets down simply to naming decision: big no-no to DLC.