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Wolfenbarg
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Posts posted by Wolfenbarg
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I completely disagree. Companion quests shouldn't be so simple and fast paced. It fleshes them out. If I couldn't take anymore of Durance's bull**** because he's such an insufferable bastard, I could kick him out. That's my relationship with Durance. If I am enamored by some of the qualities I see in his dialogue, I'll keep him around, try to gain his trust, and maybe eventually gain some respect and understanding of him as a character. If it's too easy, those options don't really end up existing. I actually wish more characters were like Durance. Having people you trust/like around vs having a certain combat effectiveness is a big choice, and makes playthroughs unique.
They're also carrying some heavy baggage. It fits their characters.
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1. Items - This has got to be one of the biggest issues. Good and unique items were one of the big reasons old school RPGs worked. Finding a completely unique and badass weapon gives identity to characters, can create new build opportunities, and lets min-maxers do their thing. The only weapon I can even remember from Pillars was The Disappointer, because it was pretty funny in flavor and in my attempts to make it viable. Nothing much stands out.
2. Encounter Design - There are just too many trash mobs. The game takes a nose dive in the fun department after Raedric's Keep and then just keeps getting worse. In Baldur's Gate, there was a big shift toward more difficult party vs party combat after Nashkell. From the bounty hunter party when you leave the mines onward was brutal and memorable. A game like this should really push you until you understand the mechanics. I felt like I was getting crushed and needed to learn everything fast after Raedric, but from then on I rarely felt like encounters forced me to really explore the mechanics deeply. Even on normal difficulty the game should feel dynamic.
3. Side/Main Quest Links - I liked the side questing in Pillars, but it feels too separate from the plot. I mean the second act works quite well if you ignore the stronghold and mostly stay in Defiance Bay. The story and potential side quests are pretty linked, with a lot of information about the world being given out while you're also unraveling the mystery behind the Leaden Key. After the second act though... it just doesn't gel anymore. Everything feels separate and spread too thin. It's all kind of off the rails until you initiate the endgame.
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I feel like Caed Nua along with Twin Elms were ideas that worked much better for a kickstarter campaign than as an actual general design template to start from. It sounds great on paper, but in execution the game didn't need more things. It just needed lots of polish and focus on the things necessary to make it work. The stronghold wasn't necessary and doesn't feel like it adds optional functionality. The strongholds in BG2 all had useful things about them, but most importantly they could give you great loot or some fun stories. They also give class identity. Caed Nua doesn't really do anything aside from adding an epilogue.
I think even if they kickstart a sequel, they really need to keep a tighter leash on big content decisions like that. The game would have been unquestionably superior if Od Nua and Teir Evron were moved to Defiance Bay.
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You have to remember the scale of time Thaos is alive in, as well. Current society is in something of a renaissance period, while he's still thinking of the world in the same light as the savages who were burning infants and covering themselves in their ashes. The current playing field levels mages, animancers, and priests with soldiers wielding firearms and merchants. Even with Engwithan ability to create gods, the Engwithan masses were depicted as being just as ignorant as the uneducated Dyrwoodans living outside of the city. There's an enlightenment going on, it's a very different time.
That's for Thaos' part, at least. But he's operating in Woedica's interests as well. She's just covering her ass, as well as covering for every other god out there. Any act which could prove their existence as constructs would undermine their position. Those terrible acts he spoke of were to serve Woedica and the gods. It's a defense of the status quo, even if that defense leads to even more damage than would have been caused if the initial secret had been leaked in the first place. You may call it illogical, but it's such a fundamentally human thing that you can track similar patterns of behavior to many disasters or crises in the real world throughout history and in modern times.
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Well I run it on an HD 4000, and it's not exactly the most fluid experience. I see videos with a smooth frame rate and turn green with envy. I'm not sure exactly what it's running at, but I set the cap at 30fps and rarely reach that in combat. If it does run, you'll have to endure some extreme choppiness.
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Vampires can be awesome. I consider Blood Omen to be one of the best examples of storytelling in a game, though the actual gameplay kind of sucked due to intense loading times.
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We might get something in the form of DLC Storm of Zehir style. Or maybe they'll put another team on that kind of game after they finish up on other projects. I doubt something will surface soon, though. I think we really need to see this game work before they make announcements to try something else in the IE style.
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Star Wars is almost immune to good storytelling. The basis for its creation seems like such an easy task (just redo the monomyth and swim in teh monies!) and gets ****ed up beyond belief almost every time. What we experienced was the exception. Bioware made the first game and even they obviously don't give a crap about the story, the lore, or the license that they created. Did the people in the planning phase for writing and lore get forced into it or something? Contrasting the craft of the game designers with the writers is kind of painful to see.
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They're all Salarians now.
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You'll know there's an announcement in this thread if there are like 6 new pages between when you last checked and now.
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I notice that you seem to have played New Vegas but didn't include it on your list. This game has the same project director, while Avellone's development isn't nearly as prominent. It's not guaranteed to not be to your taste, but it's certainly a possibility.
And I don't see this being distinctly different from the Infinity Engine games in terms of combat style. That's what people wanted from it when they backed it. It will certainly be modernized and not have the AD&D ruleset, but still... making something similar is kind of in the territory.
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I honestly do not expect it to be a second Kickstarter.
Well... they are announcing at GDC and not some bigger venue like VGX, E3, or PAX. While I'd like to see the bigger announcement, I don't really expect them to do it here of all places. Not enough people are watching to build a hype machine.
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Nah. It has nothing to do with that. It's 'cool\' to hate BIO because they were so successful. Espicially on the Obsidian boards where it's an 'us vs them' mentality.
I mean everything bad about Obsidian games is the publishers' fault, and everything good is all Obsidian. vice versa for BIO.
It wasn't BIO who made BG series popular, afterall.. it was BIS/Interplay. LMAO
That's... exaggerating. The Bioware hate has become so intense because they had three games which were started basically on the same cycle (DA2, ME3, and TOR) which happened after the acquisition and basically followed a very similar template for what their goals were. A lot of people hated those, and they landed one after another with no room for Bioware or EA to adjust for the backlash the last one received. DA2 was a dud, but they were too far in Mass Effect 3 to make sure that didn't garner a similar response, and The Old Republic isn't even a similar type of game so you can't adjust for expectation at all there. Basically, Bioware has been in the dog house for the last couple of years, while Obsidian's stock has risen significantly with gamers. If DA3 is more in line with typical expectations, then everyone will go right back to singing their praises, even on this board.
Aaaand I've never heard that last one before. Unless that's the joke, that's just way beyond the realm of reality.
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Well on the speakers lists, it says he speaks tomorrow. The other speaker I could find was Justin Bell, who I don't expect to make the announcement unless it turns out to be a rhythm game.
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Well if it came down to either shutting down or selling out, I would hope everyone keeps their job even if it means they become entity-owned.
Seriously. The company I work for may be in this position soon, and while staying independent equals more freedom, if you are not making enough money to stay afloat, you are not making enough money to stay afloat.
People also love to romanticize indie companies and indie devs, when the truth is that very few have the means to stay independent, and fewer want to stay independent. Not even mentioning that not every indie dev is a good guy.
This is to say nothing of the fact that Obsidian had to make a fundraiser to even make enough capital to make their own IP.
Think about that.
Developers don't get a percentage of gross on the games they make. Even if they are successful, the kind of success you need to have that kind of cash lying around to make your own games is pretty substantial. I can't think of any new IPs that were funded exclusively by their developers. They always win publishers bought from the good will they built up from previous success stories. Developers are like contractors and publishers are the clients. There was no client to provide the capital for this contract. Just because they needed to raise money doesn't mean they're in dire straights. They weren't ready to fold when things looked bleak in the past, and right now things are looking very good for them. In fact, now is certainly the most prominent Obsidian has ever been. You used to not be able to mention their name on a message board without seeing flurries of posts on how they ruined IPs and only released buggy games.
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Obsidian missed the mark by 1 point on a scale of 100 and the game was a financial success. That's the part where a sense of decency and honor needs to be present....but Bethesda have shown themselves to be petty and greedy. I see no reason why Obsidian or anyone else for that matter would ever deal with them again. Doing business with someone who robbed you once is plain retarded.
But in collaboration with that company, they created the best game they've ever made. They clearly love that license. Even after how distant and messy their relationship was with LucasArts, they wanted a chance to work with them again to make KotOR 3. Besides, we don't know all the details of that working relationship. Whether or not they want to work with them again may not be as dicey as it looks to us.
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Fallout 4.
I couldn't even say how much I want this to happen. Not only because I want another Obsidian made Fallout (I'm not sure I could do another game like Fallout 3 after seeing it done so well in New Vegas), but because I really want Bethesda to press on with TES VI. In my opinion, Skyrim is just a giant tease at what things are to come when the tech can handle it. Well now it can, and having to wait the same length as people did between Oblivion and Skyrim would be kind of disappointing.
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I just want options that make sense for a given situation. You don't just need to have the utilitarian line, the lawful line, the evil line, and the snarky line. You can have multiple responses of each sort of flavor depending on the situation... maybe none of those at all. I'd prefer to keep the raving psychopath out all together if that's possible at all. Maybe keep some of those in if there's just the understanding that you're trying to intimidate someone or just look genuinely crazy. Some options for unintelligent morons would be great too.
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After New Vegas, I'd rather they get another shot with a post Fallout 4 game. It'll keep the IP going strong while Bethesda works on TES VI, plus New Vegas was my favorite open world game and just one of my favorite games period. Since Fallout isn't dead, I want to see Obsidian do more with it.
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And at the begining i was laughing about how porly they designed NWN2 in every possible aspect. I was laughting that they must go Kickstarter to get founds for their game, and i was laughing when anyone of your ever thinked that this whoud be next BG2 ...
We already know that this will be cross bread between nwn2 and icewind dale ...
But still how many people baced this game becouse it's supose to be BG2 and Torment inspired ? 3/4, the only people that can be glad are those who wanted next Ice Wind dale ...
And mayby becouse of that laughing Chis never made good game, becouse both fallout 2 and Apha protocol had his downfalls ... (funny theat romances never made him laght in alpha protocol, and possibly the only good game he ever did) ... oww... sorry .. Torment was good .. but wait a second .. we alrady cut our torment influenced in PoE ... so ....clone of Icewind dale .. crossbreed with nwn2 2 biggest fails from rpg perspectiv
let me "laught" about that buahahaha
I think someone forgot to take his brain medicine.
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He's not a project director on any of these, so he doesn't have to dedicate himself fully to any one thing.
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Minsc is kind of all shtick. Edwin, on the other hand, was very surprising in his many interactions with the world despite how much he stuck to his basic character type. When you have the two together in a party, I was never at all surprised by anything Minsc did (barring one rare banter where he actually feels some concern about the all the head wounds he's sustaining), so he just kind of got old for me. Edwin on the other hand I love more and more every time I decide to bring him along because he feels more real. When I run into banters I hadn't seen before, they'll usually make me laugh, while I feel like I've already seen everything Minsc had to offer not long after he left his cell.
Morte was very different. There's more to him than is evident at first, and his story is tied pretty deeply with your own. He's a lot like Atton. He appears to be one thing, but he's really just hiding that he's something else entirely. I'd rather not have anything like a floating skull around in this game though just because of the fact that I know the world won't react to the fact that there's a floating skull and everyone needs to run or kill it immediately. It worked fine enough in Sigil since everything was so strange, but not in a more grounded world like Eternity is shaping up to have.
Mission VaoGods no. Never again. Ever.
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Well they were off for quite a while, so unless someone planned out a minor update in the meantime, I think we'll probably have to wait a couple of weeks to account for the downtime.
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This game seems to be pretty standard in presentation, only getting stranger as you really dive in to learn about things. I imagine most, if not all companions will follow that trend. Character designs work best if they fit their universe. All of the oddballs in Planescape worked just fine because of where the game took place.
White March Part 2 officially announced, coming January
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
I do agree that there should be some kind of noticable effect. If you solo PoE or play with a custom party, the madness associated with being a watcher isn't present in the game at all. There are no dreams, stat effects, and the abilities you get aren't very game changing or have any downsides themselves. If that's part of the story, it should feel like part of the story from a gameplay perspective regardless of whether or not you take their companions.
It should be like Mask. You have some lite effects no matter what, but the more you use watcher abilities (which should be more unique/powerful), the worse your nightmares get... Provided that's still part of the story in the next game and they don't go a different direction with watchers.