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Darth Trethon

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Everything posted by Darth Trethon

  1. The single, greatest and most grave mistake they can make when developing lore for PE is take any kind of ideas or notes from a JRPG(doesn't matter which). That's all I feel i need to say here.
  2. Depends how much you care to read into the philosophy of the movies but it is there nonetheless.....takes a lot of cutting to make a movie fit in two hours. Oh I never said that exploring the idea of souls is original, not by a long shot. I also didn't say they will fail I just thought it was important to bring up the discussion because it seemed like they are putting together a weak core for the lore that in these early stages is more limiting than it needs to be as I see it. If they happen to read this I'm sure they'll have their own ideas whether they be that we don't know the rest or perhaps they feel a need to tweak certain aspect or whatever. This while I'd like know is not as important to me as is to hopefully bring attention to some red flags they may have missed.
  3. There's no such thing as a soul that ISN'T fictional. If I didn't need to keep this thread related to PE I would have a lot of fun with that bit.
  4. Well, we'll see, since we've had a grand total of few paragraphs on the subject. This is true, Obsidian hasn't said a whole lot. What compelled me to make the topic is that the couple of sentences I quoted in the opening post seemed very self contained and didn't really leave a lot of room to expand upon the basic core of the lore itself.....details and growth can always go infinitely but the core itself appeared very limited in terms of opportunities for growth and without a strong core all else is at risk of collapsing on itself.
  5. That would be stupid. That would be like Obsidian shooting themselves in the foot. The whole point of the kickstarter and PE was to own their IP and have full control over it. If PE is successful it would make no sense to give it away to a publisher if they made good money. Now if PE fails in the sales department then I can see them taking publisher funding and giving up control over the IP since it would give the franchise a chance to live after they can no longer develop it.
  6. That's Star Wars in general rather than just KotOR II and I never had much of a problem with Star Wars system. The issue I have with PE is that as you said....it calls upon the familiar and redefines it(this bit is fine) but it removes some of the core pillars of the standard beliefs without replacing them with anything substantial which leaves it a bit awkward and in need of something more substantial to make it more clear and cohesive.
  7. That makes sense, I suppose that can be read both ways and it did seem a bit cross with the rest of your post. I was never too fond of the old philosophers' beliefs. They brought interesting points at times but I mostly viewed a lot of that as too disconnected from what may fit with the real.
  8. PE's stance seems to stand opposite the reasoning of most of today's belief systems as I pointed above. Nothing wrong there but it sorts of contradicts their core points and reasons for belief without really replacing them with anything which just leaves weak and quite strange core for PE's lore. Since this is the main, key driving factor of the story I think it needs to be better defined....just my two cents though.
  9. Why is negating the existence of 'life' after death an impossibility? Reincarnation, and transitional phases between reincarnations, seem to be a form of life after death, even. There are many ways Gods could potentially reach down and touch your soul, fracture your soul, perhaps put your soul into an eternal damnation, but even if they can't: do the Gods have to be cared for? I didn't mean to say it's an impossibility just a very, very odd decision given the large involvement of gods and faith which by nearly all accounts in our real world's cultures are associated with eternal afterlife....whether in reward, punishment or something of one's own creation...this often being the main incentive to follow, fear and kneel before those gods. Remove the threat and it leaves in a sort of "well, why bother now?" sort of place as I see it.
  10. I think the easiest way to explain it might be as follows. Your soul is who you are - but you are not necesarily ALL of your soul. The person who is alive at the moment is a portion of the soul and that soul could have a large number of previous lives. When you are alive there is a "wall" up between the currently alive personality and former personalities that make up the greater soul. Any crack in that wall could allow opinions, memories, or beliefs of the main Soul to influence the current personality. The alive person is part of a greater whole - their Soul. They are independant of it, but it can still influence them through various means (dreams, feelings, sense of right/wrong etc). That's the way I've taken what OE has given us so far. One major factor being the dissonance/resonance between the current personality and the former lives. I imagine the Paladin whose former lives were full of vice and injustices might have a serious psychological issue from what he needs to do and from the guilt of what he believes he has done previously (or how he plans to "attone" for it), just as an example. what you are saying here is a more complex version of how I already define a soul and I agree on most points(except the effect of memories and atonement, I think memories would redefine his/her faith and beliefs) but I don't think that is what Chris Avellone was describing for PE. I could be wrong but I don't think that's what he meant.
  11. I see where you're coming from but I see the PE definition of a soul as stretching the boundaries a bit since that would completely negate the existence of life after death and the heavy focus on gods. It seems like the soul is there to influence you, record what you do and move on. This brings the point of why care for gods at all(which I often bring up regardless but that's another story) since they ultimately have no control over you and ultimately you are beyond their control as well except maybe through handling souls which brings me back to rephrasing them as guiding spirits. It makes little sense as to why one would even care about what happens to a soul afterwards since that is soul is not you. It brings a lot more disconnects I think than my definition....of course I would think that but I hope I am making a certain amount of sense here.
  12. Interesting post up to the point of the sexism bit where as I see it you make a drastically sexist remark claimed almost as absolute.......I don't think evolved souls would pick a gender due to higher understanding if they even have any control over gender, which I'm inclined to doubt, but for what they want to achieve in that life. Your remark there seems based on a large all encompassing stereotype that all males are at their core the same.....both genders have had extraordinary achievers and visionaries as well as more than enough of less than representative members.
  13. I've taken a few philosophy classes and one of the issues I had is that often things did not appear to be defined correctly. In the case of PE it would be better to redefine the "soul" as something else....guardian angel/spirit/ancestor guiding you to destiny and you choosing to fight said destiny, a possessing demon, a corrupting entity.....etc. There are many ways to phrase this conflict to make a lot more sense....the least of these ways as I see it is defining this outside entity as one's "soul". That's because you already have a strict definition of what a 'soul' is. So when someone gives you a different definition, you think it has to be called something else. The notion of soul is a very polysemic one, and hell, we're talking about a different and fictional universe. Besides, the way Sawyer described it, calling it a guardian spirit wouldn't make any sense, because that implies an external entity that you can independently speak with (and thus choose to silence, etc). Defining the PE soul in this way raises much more interesting questions of how much of who you are, your magical capabilities, etc is inherited, how the process of inheritance works, etc. Depending on how it's done, it could be an interesting variant of how former lives and personalities were worked into the story of the Nameless One, and the impact that had on gameplay. You lost me at the underlined bit because you appear to agree with my concept of the soul but none of the rest of your post relflects it. Also it should be easy to see why what you are calling nonsensical in the underlined bit makes more sense in the context of what Chris Avellone said, more specifically this bit: "The question is how much your own behavior is being governed by your own free will or the influence of the soul inside you..." ....which has sort of been my point from the start, hence my proposal for it to be redefined. So I haven't the slightest clue what you're getting at here. I think you're getting a bit too convoluted in philosophy that you are losing sight of the practical and what actually makes sense....no offense intended, I've been there many times.
  14. Sort of like the force in Star Wars is the concept I'm getting from this except that each individual has his/her predefined bit of it that carries memories of past lives....
  15. the current incarnation finding out about past lives? At best that would manifest as memories not unlike those of the present life where the individual recognizes himself or herself as being the one that has done those things....at worst it would be like dreams where the person does not recognize himself or herself as being the one doing the deeds and not much sense would be drawn although perhaps some lessons would be learned.
  16. I've taken a few philosophy classes and one of the issues I had is that often things did not appear to be defined correctly. In the case of PE it would be better to redefine the "soul" as something else....guardian angel/spirit/ancestor guiding you to destiny and you choosing to fight said destiny, a possessing demon, a corrupting entity.....etc. There are many ways to phrase this conflict to make a lot more sense....the least of these ways as I see it is defining this outside entity as one's "soul".
  17. In the interview here: http://www.gamesindu...-on-kickstarter Chris Avellone said: This seems a bit nonsensical to me in that it separates the self or the individual from his or her soul. To me the notion of the self, the part that thinks and reasons and chooses is the soul. The soul is that which animates an otherwise useless object. I can get behind the idea of reincarnation which leaves the issue of the memory wipe to contend with but still...that part is reasonable. What doesn't seem reasonable is that the soul is placed in an awkward and somewhat nonsensical definition....an outside, separate and strange entity that seeks to control you. And the "you" here being what exactly? A live body destined to death and a self without a future? If the soul is an outside influence seeking to take control would it not be better be redefined as....well...something else. A possessing demon or corrupting entity? And what is free will independent from the soul? Free will of the body? As I see it the body's needs and desires are mostly biological and straight forward....I'd say they are more programed/hardwired into our bodies than anything else. The conflict as I see it is between the needs of the body and the needs of the soul but the body is not sentient or intelligent....its needs are merely annoyances the soul has to contend with to keep it alive and functional....fail and you go back to wherever you came from to wait for another turn. Thoughts?
  18. Not sure how to answer this....my cards never had a problem on Amazon and my pledge has gone through flawlessly. I'm guessing it's more an issue with the bank or credit union from which you got the card. The whole verification thing every time you use the card sounds like a bank or credit union giving Amazon a hard time every time they need to collect a payment. My advice: do your donation through paypal if you can and then contact your bank or credit union to find out what the problem is exactly.
  19. They do some touch-up in a photo-editing suite (like photoshop) but all of the heavy lifting is done in a 3D modeling environment. PE itself will be 2d with 3d characters....so the npcs and such will be 3d while the world will be a far better looking 2d environment much like the IE games....Obsidian has said as much in Q&As. The big budgets for AAA games mostly goes in polishing 3d environments and fixing bugs for them. The engine isn't as important as what's being done with it. A graphic calculator can be used for calculus, trigonometry or basic arithmetic. Likewise the game engine is used to create a simpler 2d world that looks beautiful and stunning without the huge budgets tied to newer games that use 3d environments.
  20. Ummm ... you realize that they have to build the environment in 3D and then "bake it" into an isometric 2D perspective right? Just because your computer isn't rendering the environment in real-time 3D doesn't mean that are creation is done in 2D They may build the basic frame for it in 3d but they do not fully flesh it out at that level. That would take a lot more time an money.
  21. I don't see how Unity is "older technology from the days of IE games". If anything, they're using new technology with visual tricks to make it look older. I don't think that screenshot they released looked older, it just had an old-school aesthetic. If anything being able to render an environment in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks is going to speed up the process of building things too, which also reduces costs. It's 2d, the world and maps of PE will be 2d....like the IE games.
  22. I don't see how Unity is "older technology from the days of IE games". If anything, they're using new technology with visual tricks to make it look older. It's not so much what they use but how they use it. They are creating environments that are comparable with the IE engines....better looking yes but not all that different. This is VERY different from creating a fully 3d world with all the special effects in that same engine.
  23. Or they knew they needed 3-4 million $ from the beginning but it was their plan to go "lol we need 1.1 mils giv pls" expecting to reach it and go way over it, DFE-style. I'm tellin' ya, Obsidian is sneaky. No, that can backfire big time. Once a kickstarter reaches its goal the backers are charged and Obsidian had no way of knowing they'd reach 3 mil let alone 4 mil. Hell just a few days before the end reaching the 3 mil mark seemed doubtful and they really couldn't count on rising 1 mil during the last 3 days the way it happened. They could have been left with a short budget and tens of thousands of backers charged without being able to deliver if they tried to play tricks. No, they did mean the 1.1 mil and I explained why this budget is justified and enough in my post above.
  24. It's all in the technology they are using.....which is mostly older technology from the days of the IE games with newer visual tricks to make it look significantly better. This means that development for them will be both significantly cheaper and significantly simpler. You got to remember that during the days of the classic cRPGs games used to cost a lot less than they do now and could be developed with a lot less people on hand. 4.1 mil may not sound like a lot in an age where we're use to hearing of games costing 10x more but as you pointed out they could have done it for 1.1 mil and there are very good reasons for these budget estimates. None of these things are in any way negatives though.....games these days are greatly diminished by the insane focus on expensive graphics and special effects and so on. I have no doubt PE will be quite amazing and perhaps a good reminder to the rest of the industry that all the fanciness isn't necessary.
  25. Well that's just stupid. I would certainly say Star Citizen (to which I linked above) qualifies to be considered an AAA game. The fact that the size of the budget is the only thing that matters is just... just infinitely stupid. That I completely agree with. It's just the way the industry has grown.....it's all about who can buy the most advertising and who has the most leverage over the reviewers and so on.
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