novander

Okay, if I hadn't already pledged money, I would be pledging money right now. This is a hint to anyone not backing yet. (2 mil., c'mon I want that house)

Auto-res after combat works for me, but inlcude a heavy penalty until you get some real healing (and I don't just mean a chance to rest.) Seems a fair compromise between the reloaders and the realistic resurrectionists.

I wouldn't suggest them as a stretch goal, they're too polarizing. Might stop some people from donating. But yes, I would like word on whether they want to include them or not.

Unless you go the "everyone is bisexual" route, in which case you can drop the gay romances and just have two male, two female interests. Personally I don't mind this, but I do understand the people who romance a character in one playthrough and are then annoyed when their sexuality changes in a subsequent one. I don't consider romances to be a major concern. I didn't know they were including them in BG2 when I first played it and loved this sudden extra depth to the world I'd found when randomly chatting with one of my companions, but I don't want them to be something necessary to every game. My favourite characters to talk with in Mass Effect were Mordin and Legion, because they had really interesting and different views on the world to explore. My favourite planescape character was Dak'kon for the same reason. I'd rather rich conversations like this than extra romances, if there's not enough budget for both.

With so few companions in the game, I suspect we're going to go the PS:T way of deep and detailed NPCs tied to the main plot. Or, as I call it, the Awesome way.

If they're tied to stats - and I'm not totally against this, but given the options I'd prefer them to be tied to faction alliegences, how quests were completed etc. - then I'd want ways for my genius weakling to talk his/her way out of combat.

I think a bigger worry is promising something that it turns out they can't deliver due to time or budget constraints. It's true, communication hasn't been great. I don't know game design. Since reading their explanations that companions take a huge amount of work to implement, I can understand not wanting to include too many on the lowest budget but my first reaction to the stretch goals was that they were holding my new favourite companion since Merrill hostage. (I feel I've complained about things DA2 got wrong in a few topics here, I think I should balance that with something they got right) Edit: For balance, I do like that J.E.Sawyer has been active in these forums since the announcement. I was all "oh man they are starting a kickstarter on a friday! People with real jobs don't work over the weekend, we're not going to get any replies until monday at the earliest!" but then I pretty soon realised that these devs are, if possible, even more excited for this game than we are.

Discrete zones are a good way of implying a much larger city without having to populate it entirely. One thing I hate about Skyrim is that you can find every single building in every city and I'm looking at them thinking "but this is everything. No wonder there are so many bandits on the roads when there's not enough room in the cities for even half of them"

I'll concede this method does not work every time. Kirkwall did not live up to my hopes for it, but Sigil proves this system can work. Kirkwall was not welcoming enough. Partly because of the plot, the refugee crisis and everything, Kirkwall felt suffocating with everything closed off but the larger cities in other RPGs like Sigil, Athkatla, Baldur's Gate, ME's Citadel all felt open, encouraging exploration. I don't want to barely ever leave the city, DA2 style, but I want it to be the focus.

I like urban environments. Big, detailed, characterful cities. New Crobuzon and Armada, Camorr, the Londons of Neverwhere and Kraken. Sigil. I like cities with the depth and colour to leave grand impressions, to spark ideas for a hundred other stories that could be told in them. Big trading cities, bringing NPCs in from every culture of the world. The map we've seen, which I believe I read somewhere here is part of a much larger map, suggests a lot of thought has gone into the world-at-large, but I'd rather have a plot - a personal, non world-saving-plot if possible - that revolves around just a handful of fully fleshed out locations, really rich with lore and flavour. Who's with me? Who wants a sprawling metropolis full of guilds and gangs, a place where building a reputation can really mean something? Who wants something else? Maybe you'd rather be wanting to explore the world, vast mountainscapes, abandoned castles and - dare I say it - the odd Dwarven mine. You're the kind of person who wants variety. I can respect that, it's just not for me. If we get that two million, I'd want my house somewhere I'd be excited to call home.

The problem with the original post here is that OP claims four things are silly, two of them for practical reasons, two of them for taste reasons. Yes, full voice acting is out of the question. It's been explained numerous times how it's too expensive and would hold back an expansive dialogue tree. Yes, working with BioWare is out of the question. This is Obsidian's game, designed to be created without publisher input. Even if BioWare had time free from their own games to work on this, EA would have to get involved as well which puts all sorts of constraints and demands on the project. However, there's nothing inherently wrong with romances or houses. Romances, I could take or leave. If people want them and you've got time, stick them in the game as something optional. Houses I'm a big fan of. They're useful, they add depth to the world and another connection with the character. If you're not down with those things that's fine, but to call them silly is demeaning to those who do enjoy them.

I'm quite against this. Sleeping and resting, yes, because they require a party camp, an inn, a house, somewhere for the party to gather and roleplay. They give the player a chance to explore the companions at a relaxed pace. I'd like to see sleeping and resting mechanics support character interactions, rather than as a measure of character effectiveness. Eating and drinking, no. I have no problem assuming the characters are doing these things anyway. I've not played FO:NV but I can see how in a postapocalyptic environment where food and safe water are scarce keeping track of them adds to the atmosphere of the game, but unless they're important to the atmosphere or the plot, I'd rather we assume my character and NPCs can take care of that stuff themselves. That said, I'm all for a modding toolkit for those who do want it. My fun shouldn't spoil yours.

I'd like to throw in another vote for the "we are tired of elves and dwarves" campaign. It's not so much that I dislike elves - I'm pretty sure I tried playing BG1 or 2 through with an elf only party at one point - it's more that I, like many people backing this project, did so when I heard the words "Planescape Torment", and one of the reasons that game was so great was that despite existing in a setting that featured elves and dwarves, it managed to avoid a lot of fantasy clich

No, please don't. I love BioWare, I really do, but if I wanted another BioWare game (and I do, please BioWare make more games) I'd go to BioWare. I want an Obsidian game. More than that, I want a game with focus. Too many people with too many ideas, no matter how great, are going to dilute the theme of the world. I'd worry the whole flavour of the game would shift more towards an all inclusive vanilla. I don't know what flavour we're getting but whatever it is, I want it strong.

I think the best part is him complaining that only PS:T could do limited companions and thus this will fail, when the PS:T dev team are on this project

Okay, that happened. Metabot, can you make a thread called "Need to give Novander a million dollars... NOW!"?

I don't care how small the characters will look, any amount of customisation lets me feel more attached to the character. Hell, I was in two minds about buying LA Noire until I heard you had a choice of suits to wear in the game. I'm slighly embarrassed by the fact but that makes it no less true. I just hope there's some play in the customisation that doesn't affect stats. Nothing worse than finding a super cool helmet only to look terrible when you put it on.

I never finished DA2 (lost my save files, couldn't be bothered going through that same tileset another fifty times, will try again before DA3 comes out) so I don't know about later in the game, but early on I really enjoyed that the companions were their own people, that they all had their own houses in the city when they weren't following you around, that they all felt like fleshed out important people in their own right. My problem with the writing in DA2 was that it was all so much smaller than DA:O. To start with at least, you weren't playing a great hero and you didn't have much agency in the world. For these mature themes to feel like they matter, there has to feel like your actions have consequences. We know that beings in Eternity have souls - actual, factual, magic-causing souls - so I'd assume they've put a lot of thought into the metaphysics of their world. I expect to see a lot of the "mature themes" involving this. I don't want another Planescape: Torment (Okay, yes, that was a lie) because we've already got PS:T and it still holds up, but the nature of souls, the value of a soul, I think that sort of thing will come up a lot. In fact, thinking about it, the whole "One good life. An extraordinary life. What levy must be paid for such a thing? If the gods won't answer it's for us to decide." quote is asking just that question.

Whatever you may think of BioWare's romances, I'd put forward the whole genophage debate in the Mass Effect games as an example of mature gameplay I'd like to see more of. There was no moral absolute; it was up to the player to decide whether the genophage was rightfully used and whether it should be cured. If BioWare hadn't messed up the very end of the trilogy these would have been galaxy-changing decisions for the player to make with lots of complex ethical issues to consider. It's pretty confusing that the word 'mature' is used to describe both a sophisticated understanding of complex issues and pictures of naked women. Let's hope Eternity is more focused on the former.