Tamerlane

I'd prefer not to have them, but I really won't be hurt in any way if they're there. Could always use another dwarf to toss at my enemies.

Kenji Sato is under alien control. Sigourney Webb is under alien control. HWP-3 is under alien control. Skyrange 1 is under alien control. Paris is under alien control. ARHGHGHGHG So long as the universe is built around it proper-like, I don't really care. But I figure a universe with powerful telekinesis and telepathy on top of "standard magic" is gonna be pretty friggin' different, and I don't know how to end this sentence so here's a period.

Oh, God. The memories. The horror. The ethereals. Squaddie Klaus Richter has gone berserk!

Well, I hope you can donate a lot of money, then.

Confession: I can't not think of this when I look at that bit of the map.

D'accord. I'm just surprised that anyone is actually expecting more than that.

I wouldn't be surprised if the game is 20 hours and has diverse enough options to support 5 playthroughs. Does that count? I... don't know? I cast my vote under the assumption that we were talking about a single playthrough.

Ah... no. Hell no.

Is anyone really expecting 100+ hours?

Abandonin' ship here, boss. And maybe replaying a Fire Emblem game because a certain avatar went and reminded me that it's been forever since I last did that.

Anything but sleep-to-regain. Really, anything. Mana? Cooldown? Something else? I don't care. Just... please, nothing that encourages taking a nap every hour.

I think a form of romance is doable and would be welcomed by some fans (not a big fan of it myself) but personally I think serious relationships in a video game are an absolute joke. Just because a character calls you "husband" doesn't mean you love her; it feels like empty words and it's an empty relationship....because she's an AI program. I don't care if it's a roleplaying game, roleplaying love just isn't doable imo. This has me genuinely curious. What do you think about depictions of love in film? In books?

That's where you lose me. The average man is tougher than the average woman. With training the difference only increases. Therefore, the toughest men are A LOT tougher than then toughest women. Adventurer. Not human. Adventurer, tovarishch. Person who wakes up in the morning, looks at a picture of a dragon, and says, "Yeah. I think I want to hit that with a stick." Anyone in the "adventuring profession" would as a matter of necessity be an above-average human being (or elf or snorlax or whatever). Imagine at least one woman existing at the far end of the bell curve, perhaps?

Of course we need dwarves. What else shall I throw at my enemies? Rocks?

See, here's my thing. Our party is gonna be... what? Four people? Six people? Something like that. We're going to be playing with a tiny subset of the entire population of a world. We are not gathering every single man and woman together and having them square off in a gladiator arena until only one sex remains. We are talking specific people. Maybe one of those people happens to be a woman who, through a combination of genetics and upbringing, is strong and talented in a fight? More so than most, albeit not necessarily all, men? Spoiler alert: that's vaguely... realistic?

There's something... odd going on here. There's this weird jump being made between "women are, generally speaking, weaker than men" and "there is no reason for any woman to be a warrior". I'm not entirely sure how some of y'all are bridging that particular gap.

Unnecessary... ... but gives me warm memories of rubbing up against building corners in Daggerfall until I reached the top then jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

Y'know, I didn't much care for Oblivion... ... but that game had a hell of a unicorn. I accidentally encountered it fairly early on - not even noticing the much-higher-level monsters all around - jumped on its back, and rode it everywhere. It went on to massacre a truly heroic number of guards thanks to its "auto-attack anyone with a weapon drawn" behaviour.

I should hope momentum has faltered. At the rate they were going for the first few hours, there wouldn't be a nerd with more than two bucks in his bank account by the end of the month.

Expansion packs! In the name of almighty Brood War!

Nah, sorry. We posted at the same time. I was referring to the post above yours.

Both assertions are painful generalizations, but I don't think I need to point that out. Well, no, since I said that one line down.

So... put limitations on them? There's no requirement that magic be overpowered. It often is, for various reasons, but that's not a thing that must be. That is just... not a thing. You can create conditions under which magic does not **** all over e'rything else.

Objection: There are different forms of objectification. Clarification: Shepard has an idealize male body - from the male perspective. An idealized male body from a female perspective probably doesn't look like that. His appearance is more about what you wish to be than what you wish to see. Unnecessary Ass-Covering: I'm generalizing, of course. Different boats for different floats. Belittling Statement: Seriously though, who uses the default face? C'mon.

Ah, you just reminded me of something that briefly came up in the healing thread, and I think it kind of fits in here. Also, you just reminded me of X-Com's terrain destruction/spreading fires/smoke effects. Damn I love that. What is a hit point, anyway? What does it mean to lose a hit point? Does that mean that you have been hit? Or are hit points some vague combination of your character's natural strength, their focus, their luck, armour, and agility? Of course if all those things are unified, you can't have separate block and dodge and damage reduction via armour and all that nice stuff because they're already covered as hit points. And that's what I prefer, but it's not something you really see. Like, ever. Instead, hit points represent some noexistent "vitality" thing that lets one character survive one axe to the face and another survive ten axes to the face because HIT POINTS RARGH. I'd love to see some manner of unified hit point system. One great, big bar. A small number of hit points for everyone, but to do damage to those, you have to get through their armour hit points. And to get through that, you have to get through their block/parry hit points, and maybe there's a constitution bonus there or something. And their dodge hit points. And if it's a spell maybe it bypasses armour but there's a separate "magic resistance" hit point or... something. And you know what, Obsidian is probably miles past thinking about this stage so I'm just talking to hear myself talk. I like hearing myself talk.