Ieo

Uh. No. Absolutely not for dialogue choices. The "this is a renegade option!" stuff is so mind-numbingly oversimplified as it was. PS:T couldn't possibly support the likes of this (up to 18 dialogue choices and most not "good or evil"), and even BG sometimes had dialogue options passing five--what, an emoticon for each? No... "Expression" should be narrative and/or dialogic, IMO. Like PS:T or BG's affected dialogue with only initial voiced lines. Look, I know you want full VO and all that, but the less "automated creative handholding" the player gets, the much better it is for letting our imagination actually work. The problem with current action CRPGs like Dragon Age is that they take all the creativity away from the player by using full VO, cinematics, and expressive heads, all of which strip text content. I don't want to be patronised. The only "expression" in character portraits I'd tolerate is the health/damage in PS:T.

Nooooooo, I can't listen to this at work.

I posted in the original Update thread containing his concept art that I'm pleased there's an older character. And in fact, I want him to speak in fables and allegorical riddles. Possibly like a tripped out, partially stoned Yoda.

I was thinking of the reddish highlights in her hair on the concept art...

Gamey? I'm not sure what that even means in a game. Now, the AI can be changed pretty simply, I think, to cover both pulling and kiting. If the enemy we're hitting is melee, make them run for cover. If the enemy we're hitting is ranged, neither pulling nor kiting will work anyway. In a mixed group, the melee enemies could run for cover and wait for our own party to charge in and their ranged members could move out to lob back at us. Stuff like that.

Huh, I was wondering what you were talking about. Since I've never kited in the old IE games. Too awkward. Pull = Grab the attention of a smaller number of enemies (usually 1-2) from a larger group by lobbing an arrow or something, thus keeping any given fight on a smaller scale (in IE, this would often be done by keeping the fog of war on the other enemies so they couldn't "see" you). Kite = Running around and keeping an enemy on you while someone else in the party does ranged damage, or you lay traps or crowd-control (web, hold, etc.) and run to a distance to do more ranged damage. Mostly, you're always moving while whittling down the enemy. I've really only seen this done in MMOs. I'd like a way to still do intelligent "pulls" but give the enemy better AI as well. And this fog of war exploit business.... can we get rid of that? Edit: I should mention that there are some more intelligent ways in which pulling is managed in MMOs. For example, one mob in the group may be the one that runs off to get help (you may have an opportunity to shut him down); or the ones you're currently fighting, once their health drops to a certain point, they'll flee and try to get more help. Et cetera.

Wow. I mean, err.... wow. You did all that from a concept and the dungeon actiony group pic, huh? Here's another bit of fan art from a little while ago, more on the humor side: http://forums.obsidi...c/60820-fanart/ Edit: Oh, yeah, and as MC commented, I'd expect red in the hair. Very nice as it is, though.

I'm going to guess that you didn't read Update 15 at all. Go back to the first page and reread the quote of interest again.

Seasons would be great, so long as it's balanced against gameplay time and whatever. To be honest, I would place geographical differences (climate, geology, etc.) higher than that, so I wonder if seasonal differences across geographical ranges would be easy enough to implement... Weather--definitely. A night thunderstorm with a roving band of baddies would be pretty interesting. And this probably won't happen, but I'd be interested in an in-game calendar as well as day cycle. Seeing effects of specific holidays--cultural, institutional, etc.--like festivals, additional quests, specific shops closed, learning more lore... (Wishful thinking, I suppose.) Dear gods yes. Having to repeatedly mash the rest button in BG for something to happen--I forget what now--was annoying.

I'd really like this. It'd be interesting if certain factions are more far-reaching and may have different footholds into either city, with some factions only existing in one or the other. Longer quest chains may end up covering both, preferably indirectly. Maybe you help with possible trade agreements, politics. Or break them. As a side note, I liked the city of Baldur's Gate more than Athkatla because it was designed contiguously, but the intra-city travel in Baldur's Gate was awful compared to Athkatla's discrete maps (you had to leave a map at an edge just so to get where you wanted to go). News of my character's worldly events reaching either place first could have interesting effects as well, both pre/post.

Originally, as more information about PE was coming out during the KS period, I really wanted multi-classing. Then Update 15 came out: Multi-classing with highly flexible classes as those described above would be hell. In terms of technical balancing and resource management, I really think that we should either have very narrow classes plus multi-classing OR highly flexible classes with no multi-classing. It sounds like the latter, so I'm good with that.

I'm not sure exactly what you're proposing; there's no abstract or IMRAD format. Are you suggesting advancement without explicit character level? Hmmm. I'll be honest--I do not like binding "advancement" to gear. In every single game I've played that has done this, questing inevitably becomes entrenched in that mindset, and the narrative becomes second-place (some people would play that way anyway, but I mean there's no need to design the game to favor that). In a faction-based political game world, then there's the added issue of balance--if you want the most awesome full plate set, you must become ultra-friendly with faction A. Or the designers can make awesome side-grade full plate sets for all factions, and then players will be tempted to metagame to that extent, or maybe that wouldn't even make sense for some factions. I suppose ways around this would be to make random drops or general cave-kill-loot areas or just put stuff into shops... but let's face it, getting great stuff out of questing tends to feel better than shopping or random drops. I really did like BG1's gear spread because there was a narrow range of useful stuff and I didn't need to obsess about it. I play an MMO at the moment; gear is everything, and you must obsess to play effectively. As everyone should know, MMOs are generally dead last in narrative compared to SP CRPGs. But don't forget crafting. That's a whole other variable the game needs to be balanced against. Since we know nothing about it, I don't feel the need to conjecture except that I expect Obsidian to actively consider game balance. The open question about gear is simply--what gear range will PE be balanced against. I'm very dubious about your enemies/magic sections. Weapon advancement by grinding enemy numbers is a straightforward mechanic, but it lacks any finesse; while it's true that field experience is better to hone one's combat skills, substantial training with specific field point training can work (don't forget that PE will be designed to allow completion with dialogue as well, and I don't believe the desire to talk is necessarily mutually exclusive with the ability to fight). Your magic idea is already unbalanced against your "weapon advancement" idea in that mere skill use advancement is easier than kill advancement. Any system that promotes or even requires grinding is already broken, IMO. I would rather have skill advancement be tied to character level and player choice. My view on advancement revolves mainly around game balance versus personalization, I suppose. Character levels are much easier to conceptualize and balance ("seasons of experience") against enemy content as well, and Josh said somewhere that PE1 will be somewhere around level 12-13 in D&D terms. * Character creation. Player picks the stats, basic class-based gear (or auto-grant is fine by me). This is easier to balance than learn-class-by-content because PE has a lot of classes and designing such content without hamfisting is too much--I'd rather all that work go into world content. Unless we're talking about in-game NPC trainers like Divinity 2 or something, but that game had three classes. PS:T also only had three classes, so you could get by training class content within game questing/NPC interaction. * Health/Stamina by level+stats. Straightforward. * Then the bulk of other character advancement should be based on discrete skills learned at new levels. I'm not a fan of trees. Too railroady, lacks personal customization, over-simplifies thinking to developer-defined roles. But loose bushes--sure. I don't mind wizards and priests learning from randomly found scrolls and whatnot, but the balance problem there is that none of the combat classes can do this..... unless there are combat books teaching specific combat skills---but then there are so many classes in PE and we don't want their class skills to overlap much at all that I think the learn-skill-by-item thing is best thrown out completely. Learning special skills by quest, however, can be finessed so that a certain quest NPC could teach certain skills for a subset of classes. There are a number of ways to do all this, I guess.

Oh yeah, part 4. I'm still trying to estimate how many parts this will reach until 2014. LOL The problem with the poll design (I do appreciate that it tries to expand on the topic) is that romance is a particular subtype of love that essentially leads down the path to sex, which isn't a bad thing. But I really can't stand overly idealized versions of it, which tends to be what many people are brainwashed into believing. I have a problem with "romance" being equated to the "highest form" of love (or even the only one worth having in a game), though--there are so many other kinds with equal value. So a better poll question for me would be "what is love" with romance being one of the options. I mean, think of family love. That definitely isn't romance. I'd be in favor of: That is all.

Love this stuff. Keepin' it real. Are writers under the narrative design? How many? How many team members total? So curious.... Thanks! More first-Sagani-art plz!

I think that the basic lore and concepts is what every character should have some superficial ideas or at least to heard something about it. Therefore there is no point to avoid any lore updates, especialy on early stage like this. Oh, I have no problem with lore per se (I did know a bit of the lore for Baldur's Gate at least), but there was mention of "story elements." So I'm just hemming and hawing about that, however nebulous the term might be for the purposes of an update...

I'm still waiting for more art from the original artist who did the very first Sagani pic. That wasn't Justin Sweet, and I quite liked it; if it's someone else internal, that's really fine by me.

Anything else, we get when we get. Hmm. I'm torn. Lore is interesting and will color the directions that a story might go. But I don't want to be spoiled about the story specifically (I mean, went into the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape Torment completely blind--quite the experience). ~siiiiiiiiiigh~ Might have to skip the next update. As for update frequency, I honestly wouldn't mind once a month. I expect the work after this design stage to be rather mundane and extremely technical, something we have no need to know about.... so I'd actually rather they sketch out the basics of their update content releases all the way to 2014, and once a month seems about right for that for the top end of frequency.

CRPG design and development are absolutely not the same as PnP play. There will be emulation of elements, but the entertainment types are simply different. Many things simply cannot be fully translated into a computer program. I suppose we can continue to expect these threads to continue to pop up despite all the previous interviews, articles, discussions (see links in sig), so here are a few cogent quotes to quash simplistic sentiments like this: Wrong. See below. Do actually read the dev quotes, and there are more interviews linked in my sig. This sounds horribly awkward for a game with multiple factions and where quests will have multiple outcomes--I suppose if you spend several minutes discussing preferred choices for a given quest, it can be roleplayed, but the only technical way this can work is that only the leader can "do" a quest and pick dialogue outcomes. Have you played Planescape: Torment? If the narrative, quest, NPC interactions are going to be anywhere near that level, with more dialogic content than BG, I don't see co-op working well (unless, again, all other players besides the leader are there for cannon fodder and not to play the narrative content). But you are thinking as a player only. Not a developer. Not someone who has to look at the overall market and company budget. So, that said. I don't care if some players want to do all the debug work themselves with a mod--that'd be great. Mods open up resources and creative possibilities (yes, quite a bit of crap too). Or maybe the retail PE will sell MILLIONS of copies and make this a AAA franchise so Obsidian can properly look into MP without sacrificing SP. Or they'll add a crappy layer after the fact, long after the SP elements have been laid down for the main game and sequels (because if MP would require concessions in sequels, that would mean sequel content would be inferior to the original).

I'm not sure I'd like a universal inventory in PE, though I did enjoy it in DA:O (one of the few things I did like )---just allowing all individual party inventories to be open at the same time would go a very long way in usability. With support for higher base screen resolutions on the PC platform, I think Obsidian can definitely do more with the inventory/paperdoll UI. That said, I wouldn't mind a small conceptually shared bag/"slot bar" under the premise that you'd be constantly splitting stacks anyway, with whatever reasonable penalties or something. But that's really not a big deal to me when we have manual pause and autopause and, hopefully, all-individual-bags-open option. If there wasn't a way to open all individual bags at the same time on the screen, then I would place more preference on the addition of a small, shared inventory alongside regular individual inventory. Someone mentioned something about accessing inventory in combat... I haven't played a game where that's impossible; if such a thing were to be implemented, though, I think it'd be reasonable to have a shared inventory bag that is usable in combat, along with the usual convenience slot UI. Actually, that sounds like something more appropriate for a difficulty setting, really.

Adventurers for glory/chosen one/gold/etc. Maybe another party tries to get quests from you. BONDARI RELOADS.

I'm not a fan of any autoupdate in any of my software and proceed to completely disable them forthwith, or tell my firewall to block it; I don't have that many games, but I have a vast collection of utilities, productivity software, and whatever. Zero tolerance for constantly calling home. I would not mind a stepped feature: * Full autoupdate upon game launch * Manual check-and-update with internal button * Auto check and download but manual installation * Discrete manual patches (external) Even Microsoft has something like that. I do foresee issues with autoupdating and mods, so players must be able to disable any internal autoupdate functionality.

Yes, you're just trolling. And I'm speaking as someone who's playing an MMO. You (and the opponents, really ) don't seem to understand the main draws of MMOs: Social play in a persistent world. That's it. It's a particularly strong addiction. And as someone with 6-7 years of experience in MMOs, I can attest from personal experience and much observation that regardless of how players lose interest over time, the final reason why people continue to subscribe is social interaction. I remained subbed on one MMO for a full year after losing interest in gameplay just to maintain ties with some people, and I still regularly communicate with a couple despite having quit four years ago. There's nothing innately superior or inferior about an MMORPG--it is a completely different category of game compared to a narrative-drive SP CRPG. It's comparing puppies to pineapples. As for SP -> MMO, why yes, SWTOR did awfully well in slaughtering the KotOR franchise and company stock, huh. Stupid poll, stupid thread, stupid idea.

Whut, has no one yet mentioned that there were several NPC body model types in Baldur's Gate, including fat people? Of course, they were never adventurers. And the "old geezer" body model NPCs were emaciated miners and beggars... *cough wheeze* ...My lung! It's floppin' all over the dirt! ....Damn.

A contained game narrative with character arc doesn't necessarily preclude inheriting at least some of the same companions and NPCs; I'd definitely want to see some familiar faces available for continuing play... out of 8 companions, if Obsidian chose to only allow 4 to "return," I'd be annoyed if my favorite companion wasn't among them, but so long as they were all in the sequels and available for chatting (maybe as quest givers or whatever), I'd still be fine with it. Which actually makes it even worse. You see, it isn't just my assumption that they were meant to be the Five; my understanding is that the developers, when the question was put to them by a confused fan after ToB was released, claimed they were meant to be the Five and were left generic because the design of the Five hadn't been determined yet. I don't have a direct quote, though. Just what I've heard when the question came up previously. I suppose I could be wrong, but given how sloppy the design of ToB was in general I doubt it. I played SoA+ToB well after the final release date and I wasn't active in the gaming community in any capacity at the time, so I definitely haven't heard of that. Meh, I'll stick with my generic interpretation, I guess. Of course, your feelings on that illustrates perfectly why there shouldn't be much foreshadowing in games. It's risky and can lead to sloppy implementation later. And in the great tradition of psychological serial position effect in linear storytelling, any foreshadowing is best left within the game body and not dangling off a final end-game cinematic. IMO.

Oh, I only played KotOR1. Sacrilegious, I know... I liked the KotOR1 ending just fine; actually the reason why I didn't play KotOR2 was because a friend described how your KotOR2 character ended up being shoehorn-retcon-blah (I don't know the exact literary term for what they did, if there is one) for SWTOR, which ended up being a spoiler for me so I couldn't bring myself to become invested in something that's canonically destroyed... (I had the same feelings for Divine Divinity and Divinity 2---I only played Divinity 2 and then found out that the creators decided the main character from Divine Divinity would be canonically male or something, I don't remember. It was messy to me, so I just didn't bother.) Also, I should qualify my original statement on how foreshadowing is my favorite literary device---it's my favorite only if it comes to proper fruition. There are certainly examples of great foreshadowing in various media because those hints came full circle, but the mere addition of foreshadowing is half the dance, and failure to follow through immediately drops that implementation to hateful half-assery. That's why I think it should be as minimal as possible in a game with iffy franchise prospects. True, we don't know if there will be a P:E 2. We don't know whether the game will sell well enough to warrant one. I don't think that's any reason to hold off in preparing for the possibility of it, though. Baldur's Gate had its level cap and its unfinished Bhaalspawn storyline that was just begging for a sequel and a more definitive ending...but if it had tanked in sales and there had been no BG2, would that have been reason to consider preparing for it a mistake? I don't think so. There are certainly different levels of closure that any author/creator can implement. "Open-ended" closure where the adventurer is still capable of going forward is the best for a franchise without the giant arc. I think BG1 had the perfect open-ended solid closure cutscene. BG2:ToB is truly closed closure. By the way, I just checked on Youtube about BG2:SoA's foreshadow cutscene--you're wrong. The table showed 7 hooded figures.