Shades

The main reason I went up to $250 was for the Collector's book. I just cannot resist such things (well I could resist it being hardcover when the hardcover was at $500 because that was a little too much for me). And as a bonus since I pledged within a day or two of the Kickstarter starting since then extra things have kept popping up in the $250 tier as well, so I'm not getting more than I thought I would when I first put that pledge in. It is a lot of money though and it's a shame that people who want it can't afford it. I'm not sure how/if they're going to manage the possibility of adding to things after the Kickstarter has finished. It would be kinda nice if anyone who has pledged still had access to all the Kickstarter tiers and could just inch their pledge amount up via paypal so they could eventually get to the tier that they wanted to.

Whooooo, fandom....... Oops, hit post too quickly. Actually, I imagine the personalities to be kinda like that. Edair's and Aloth's especially, haha. Glad they match up with someone else's thoughts too. Poor long-suffering Edair having to put up with all that nonsense

I figure this is probably the best place to put this... Yes, I am apparently strange enough to do fanart of concept art. Their personalities are probably horribly wrong (but we don't really know anything so I had to guess ) and I blame any mistakes on insomnia. I'll also blame anything else on insomnia. Including the insomnia.

Yeah, I think having multiple portraits of the same characters would... It wouldn't be a waste of money as such, but you're basically getting the same thing done several times over (I think redundant is the word I'm looking for) when instead you could say give the player more portraits to choose from. As for letting players change portraits on their own characters and companions in-game? I think that does sound like a good idea, and makes it even more likely that modders and the community will provide custom portraits of their own that you can use for the companions if you want.

The main problem with NWN was that they just.... Reused the same portraits over and over and over again. They gave you a nice selection at the start of the game (unlike BG where you could pretty much only choose from ones that already belonged to companion NPCs and the start tutorial summons, meaning you were probably going to run into 1 person with your portrait during the whole game), but no matter what you chosein NWN (unless you went for a custom one) you'd almost certainly see your characters portrait used more than once during the game. I found that annoying and preferred only important characters to have portraits.

... You think BG had inventory slot tetris? That isn't inventory slot tetris, inventory slot tetris is when you have a grid of squares for your inventory and each item takes up a certain number of squares. Hence the 'tetris' part (you have to find ways to fit different sized items in, though unlike tetris you can't rotate items). I found the IE inventory style preferable, though I can see what you mean if you say, had your inventory full of small items like scrolls or potions (though in the BG2 expansion Throne of Bhaal I believe you got potion and ammo bags as well as the BG2 gem bags and scroll cases). I'm not sure how feasible having characters walk to a window to talk would be since a lot of PC-companion conversations (at least in the IE games) are timed and therefore can come up in almost any location. Maybe they could have a character walk away/not trigger if non-companion NPCs are within a certain radius of them or not mention such things in cities/towns, but ehh... I... Think that BG2 did have character portraits (if the NPC had one) beside names when characters were talking? (If that's what you're asking for.) Or maybe that was from a mod I had. I remember Bodhi having one. I'm guessing you mean you want to see the time just displayed instead of the clock? Hm, I wonder if they could assign a key to show the time, that way you just press a key to show it and the clock itself is still there. I hope for a nice and clear journal/quest log too where I can easily figure out what I have left to do and possibly what I have/haven't done in a quest so far.

I think that was how PS:T worked, but without the recharging bit or being able to charge opponents. I think in terms of speeding up getting around the place I wound find a recharge on the run a bit of a pain (unless as mentioned I also have something where I can just speed up the whole game, in which case a recharge on running wouldn't bother me).

The only CRPG I've played where I could tolerate the movement speed is Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition, but I haven't played it in a while so I can't remember how it compares to the IE games. I'm playing Arcanum right now, and the speed's tolerable. Here's a gameplay vid of Heretic Kingdoms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY3oTuJz0LM See, even that I would want to speed up on subsequent playthroughs to save me time. Sigh, I'm just one of those difficult to please people.

I agree, in the IE games, your character always walks everywhere (except PS:T, I think you can run in that). This is fine on your first playthrough, because you're taking everything in. Even on your second playthrough where you'll see things you missed. But when you get to your third playthrough and beyond... ? It starts to get a little slow. In the BG series I would toss boots of speed on all my characters to speed them up a bit, but those of course affect combat a bit too. Basically I would love to see a slider where I can increase the game speed if I want to (so that the speed of everything increases, enemies, time passing etc). I don't know how easy or difficult this would be to actually implement (I think you can do it in some RTS games?). Sometimes I just want to be able to play through the whole game a lot faster, because I don't have a lot of spare time.

I think this is something that grows on you after you've had time to think about it for a bit (to get over the initial 'ehhh...' reaction). Reading up on the lore about the technology level of PE and how the guns will actually work helps a lot too. Of course those who have played Arcanum probably found it easier to get used to the idea too. I think it will work well and that it will be interesting to see in the game.

Do you mean the Shofixti? I thought the Yehat were the scottish ones. And yeah, Star Control 2 is full of all sorts of awesome races and the music that they have for each race is great too.

You say you haven't played the IE games, so I think you may be misunderstanding the way voicing works in them. Typically in IE games your character has a soundset, like say... DA: O where you select a PC soundset. Your companions also have soundsets like this, and they have some lines of banter between each other that are all voiced. They may also have longer banters where you have the standard first line being voiced, and the rest isn't. With most conversations the first line is voiced, and the rest won't be (I find for me this provides me with the sound of a character so I end up reading the rest of the dialogue as if the voice actor is saying it). Sometimes you'll get a few voiced lines in a conversation, or with your big baddies sometimes you'll get all or most of their side of a conversation voiced. You do have ambient voicing, both with background sound that involves voices where they're not actually saying anything intelligible, and also specific lines from random NPCs standing around. For example a town crier will yell out every so often, courtesans would call out, sailors will call out too. NPCs would usually have... I think about 2 or 3 different voiced lines they would cycle through if you talked to them. I don't recall talking to NPCs and not getting a voiced sound playing in response. Basically my point is that although the IE games have limited voicing that doesn't mean they don't cover everything that they need to with the voicing they do have. I'd suggest trying them out before deciding that more voicing is needed

Yup! The limbs? He could dual-wield crossbows. Here he is:

You forgot Okku! The rainbow bear in MotB! I'm happy to see any type of companion, as long as they're well written with interesting stories/personalities. And considering the people who will be creating these companions as nikolokolus mentioned, I don't think we have anything to worry about. In Planescape: Torment you have a floating (talking) skull, a suit of armour, a burning man (literally), and a... How to describe him... Kinda like an old CRT monitor with wings and multiple limbs, among others (I'd say those four would be the most unusual in terms of being non-humanish).

Vailian republic sounds great .... I read that as Villain republic, a city full of villains! Imagine all the evil laughing and fighting going on in such a city.

Hmm, let me see... Not sure if this really counts, but it might.

I'm quite curious to see how the two-toned skin looks. And the hairy ears.... I'm having trouble picturing that looking decent. My brain is only coming up with hair coming out of the ears like this: Or something like furry ears that you might see on... Catgirls/boys. Neither of which seem terribly appealing. I doubt they'd come up with something that looked awful and terribly out of place in the setting though, so I'm guessing they simply have a lot more imagination than I. I certainly look forward to finally seeing what this, the other mysterious race and the Godlike races look like.

Ah yes! Forgot to add: I wonder if any upgrading of pledges or paypal pledges after the Kickstarter (if we can do such a thing) is over could still count towards that last 3.5 stretch goal in case we don't get it? Because it would be really awesome if we could still get there and grab the goal even if we don't manage to reach 3.5 within the timeframe of the kickstarter.

Gah, so much interesting information in the lore. I wonder if a spirit wind is what the player encounters at the start, or something different/bigger? Always good to have more goodies with information about the setting too, should be a very interesting read. Also, that screenshot is gorgeous. I really wasn't expecting anything like it. I'll say now that I actually think we can make the 3.5 city goal. I mean Double Fine got pretty close to it, and despite all the doubts floating around PE seems to have more than they did on the same day now, so I think we can do it (positive thoughts! Positive thoughts! ). 4M I think would be pushing it, but 3.5 we can do if we can get this thing really skyrocketing in the last days. And now I can finally crash and sleep.

We are giving our companions gifts to make them like us more. Like chewed up cake!

Changing the name to Marshmallow: The Adventure of Marshy the Marshmallow Who Lives in a Marvelous Marshmallow Marsh (or not so marvelous since it's made out of his fellow marshmallows).

Uhg, becoming a lack of sleep zombie. Soon, soon...

(WH- What are you doing out of my chest and posting on message boards?! Next thing I know my lungs will be strolling off to grab chips or something.) “A beginning is a very delicate time.” Did he just quote Dune? Interesting interview, especially seeing how much research goes into developing the world. It's nice to know that they take a close look at how things may have been in similar real world time periods and the like.

Exactly, the BG games had some great quality voice actors in them and there were a couple of threads around at some point asking for specific ones. You'd be surprised by how much even a small amount of voicing can add to a game, it gives you a hint of what that character sounds like. And I know for myself whenever I read anything else that character says without voicing I will be reading it as if the voice actor is speaking the lines in my head. A talented VO can make a good character even better. And with limited voicing like the BG series I'd say maybe they could afford decent voice actors if they wanted them (though that is a guess). I'm certainly not expecting and do not want full voicing of any sort.

Oh man, that means it'll probably come out around... 6am here, gah. But I have tomorrow off work... This is terribly tempting. Hm, I do do have some extra work that I could get done while I wait too, and I've been meaning to start a new game of BG1 or MotB. Hadn't even thought of the voice acting, but I think that sounds like a pretty plausible guess for what they might announce tomorrow.