Gurkog

From what I have seen, this will be spiritual successor to PS:T. The main 'quest' is about a personal event/tragedy and how it effects your character. Something like that, because they are deliberately vague so early on.... no sense spoiling the game when they aren't even in alpha testing yet.

The Infinity Engine games are not hardcore, in my opinion. I found them to be so incredibly popular because of their compromise of hardcore pen-and-paper micromanagement and the ability of computers to do all of the calculations in real time without the hassles that would slow a player down (worrying about fatigue, nutrition, weather, sickness, etc...). They made RPGs accessable to people who want to just jump into an adventure and be swept away while offering some depth to those who want a more traditional experience. EDIT: The old games had difficulty options... so I do not see why challenge would be a factor in how hardcore the RPG is. Eternity is almost guaranteed to have difficulty adjustment options as well.

Around here, there is not much love for the companions in Fallout 2. I really liked them and only a few of them had voice actors. They weren't terribly fleshed out, but had some banter, personality, and they all felt sort of unique and real. EDIT: just don't expect anyone in your party to survive if Marcus is behind them wielding a big gun!

But it is a lot cheaper to romance an NPC!

I have no idea why this popped into my head, but any sexual encounters in the game should range from a George Michaels trading alcohol for gay sex with hobos in a public park to courting a wealthy socialite over a series of balls/parties. Perhaps relationships could scale the same.

@septembervirgin The mature part of a game is the consequences to the players choice. An immature view on sex, violence, power, wealth, etc... does not take into consideration the related risks and benefits beyond instant gratification. Consequences are usually shallow and immediate following a player's actions, but rarely incorporate long-term effects on the game world. Which is why in TES games you can steal everything and murder just about everyone without much effect beyond less clutter seen around town and fewer NPCs to stare at you and make repetitive statements as you walk by. They need to take the butterfly effect to a higher level than knee-jerk reactions to make the world feel more mature and compelling.

ooo, another option for abortion... A scenario that makes the decision harder incrementally, and the longer you put it off the worse it gets. Companion joins the party after being rescued from some form of abuse/rape situation. As we get to know them on our journeys we find that they were impregnated by the abuser/rapist. A ways into the pregnancy it is revealed that some kind of complication that threatens the child and mother. but you have the option to only save one. The player is given the option to handle the situation in different ways during each step with varying consequences. Convincing the companion to abort the fetus early on could lead to resentment and leaving the party and a possible negative reputation hit due to her speaking out her disapproval of you. Finding an adoptive family for the unborn child could be an optional quest before the final critical event. Saving the companion could lead to similar results as an early abortion. Maybe there is a way to save both, but she may decide that giving up the child is unacceptable and leaves the party. I don't know... I am just rambling now, but there could be all kinds of conflicting emotions for the player as that side story progresses. I have no idea what I would choose to do. There is no right or wrong... only choices and consequences. Meh, I doubt anyone would hit that topic in a game.

Since abortion was brought up... Spend the game building a romantic relationship with a companion, pregnancy happens (you or your partner depending on chosen gender) and due to injuries in a skirmish the child is spontaneously aborted. You then have to deal with the fallout, and perhaps the relationship won't survive that. Even if it does, there could be a dark cloud hung over all future encounters with that companion. See. abortion can be used in some way to impact the character and it is even easily fit into the gameplay. EDIT: Perhaps one of the characters can express relief because they did not feel comfortable with raising a child in such complicated circumstances.... there could be some variety to how it could go.

When playing PnP games do you play as the entire party? I prefer role playing 1 character at a time and it just feels like having a tea party with my imaginary friends when I role play an entire cast of characters. Tea parties are not very exciting, imo.

I would prefer there be no indication of what skills, traits, etc. effect the options in dialogue. It makes creating different characters feel more like a unique experience if I have no idea what they will be capable of. I am also a lot less likely to become fixated on gaming the system to make 'perfect' replies when there are no indicators. In other words, don't tell me how or why dialogue options are available or how effective they will be. It is more entertaining to just go with it and see what happens.

Dialogue "puzzles", like in Planescape: Torment, put the RP in RPG. It is kind of hard to roleplay a personality when there are only binary choices in how to interact with NPCs.

The game is supposedly based around souls. What if the physical manifestation of people/creatures is just a product of the soul's will to enter that plane of existence. The more often the shell dies the more difficult it is for the soul project its image. Ressurection might only involve providing a beacon for the soul to focus on. A character might always be resurrectable unless you wait too long and it moves on to other things/planes of existance.

There is no problem with Obsidian making a unique and riveting story. I like their style so much that the first game I ever pre-ordered was Fallout: New Vegas. I did not regret that for a second. The problem with 'megalomaniac/ancient evil' is that, unless they do something innovative, the cliche is just too predictable. I am just the type of player who prefers interesting stuff to do instead of 'OMGsuperepicexplosionz' type of villains. Heck, I think it would be really, really, really interesting to have a final objective that does not involve fighting anything at all. Perhaps the final confrontation is a puzzle, with many clues scattered about to find if you need/want help. Anything that doesn't involve destroying things would feel refreshing. Now, having all kinds of fights on different scales throughout the world is fine, but not having the main quest focus on bloodshed.... not as predictable.

When people base their entire way of life around an ideology that is taught to them from a young age and rigidly enforced in theocracies and dictatorships (abusing religion to control the population), it has a tendency to make their personalities brittle. It is not surprising to see some of them snap and attack an alien culture because they are not equipped to deal with the truth of their situation. I would dare to say that most of the extremists do not even know what our freedom of speech means because they only know how their governments censor everything.

I think they only had 640x480 and 800x600 at the time. EDIT: if it is going to have 2d backgrounds, I do not think that a rotating camera would work.

You should notice that Bloodlines does not have nearly as many NPCs as for example Fallout does. It is an example of voice acting that adds to the quality of the characters. I could go through most of Bioware's games without listening to the dialog, but I enjoy listening to every character in V:tM-B I guess it is just personal opinion and as such I can not prove anything.

Aye, just like the original Fallout they should allow players to do whatever they want, but put in consequences for whatever they do. Choice and consequence is the basis of all games, but does not need to be tied to a morality system. You do stuff and things will happen. EDIT: An awesome form of consequences could be changes to abilities to reflect your character's behavior. Perhaps a self-sacrifcing character will do extra healing to severe injuries with spells at the cost of its own health, while a selfish prick character could do more to themselves at the expense of an ally's health and an aggressive, confrontational type would fix severe injuries at a cost of of the target's health (fixing a nearly dead character's broken leg might kill them).

3d models of heads lack the personality that the old style portraits conveyed. Plus it is awesome to put Bobby Kotick's head on a companion and treating it like ****.

When you have fully voiced dialog lines changing the script becomes prohibitively difficult/expensive behind a certain point, the game itself becomes significantly larger and thus possibly more difficult to distribute and lines that are fine in written form become unusable when they are actually spoken (especially by drama school students, about whose actual competency I have certain doubts). I have not played a cRPG which I have felt was made better by the inclusion of fully voiced dialog, quite the opposite really and I do not believe this will ever change. Try Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Although it was released unfinished.

I don't think so Tim. It was stated in many places that they are looking forward to designing a game that does not need to be altered to fit the constraints of a console, mainly the limited functionality of a controller. EDIT: I was too slow!

I hate multiplayer because it almost always results in changes to the single player experience that are obvious and jarring, but if you put in a stretch goal and it gets met..... I could live with it. As long as the single player campaign is not altered.

If there are elves, dwarves and whatnot in the game, they should be drasticly different from Tolkienesque tropes. As an example, the elves in Harry Potter were a nice deviation. I wouldn't mind the game being based around a character from a barbarian/orc/troll type of tribal society trying to maintain its cultural identity and way of life in the face of expanding civilization. Perhaps the goal being to thwart 'progress' as it is leading to dehumanization due to the surplus of people. The huge populations and increased communication between cities lead to a homogenization of culture and a lessening of individual worth. After a while the people start to feel alienated from others as if they are all cogs in a souless machine. I think there is a lot of possibility in such a theme, and perhaps it can be explored in just one part of the world or a single side quest chain.

I hope the emphasis is on characters first and their roles second. I am willing to sacrifice functionality for entertainment value. If it is like Baldur's Gate, it might be possible to solo the entire game (except not being able to do a lot of optional stuff and maybe not the highest difficulty) with any class. EDIT: I remember having a paladin that was immune to all attacks except maze, but very few enemies used that.

He is true master of the craft. I wouldn't mind if he did ALL of the male voices in the game.

I just hope they don't try to add an awesome button.