Ieo

I think it depends on the player---those who are more concerned with mechanics and have a tendency to powergame probably won't care one whit about spoilers. Here's a specific dev quote on the beta content, though:

Hmmm. So having dependable villains is a cliché? I worry, as per my initial post, that the swan-dive away from "cliché" risks ending up with too-cool-for-skool pretentiousness. It matters not if they are barbaric savages, humanoid tribes or whatever, but a race of dependable mooks is a standard and, in many ways, helpful gaming trope. Subvert it, sure, give it a twist, liven it up. But... nonsensical? Nonsensical in the "orcs are evil to their bones" boring Tolkien way. PE doesn't have alignment, after all. Make them a race with different motivations and culture and maybe even a faction (go go World of Warcraft!), and that's one way to do it better. But the Dragon Age darkspawn fell into that booooooring trap, to be sure.

I think the examples from Planescape show the best way to do it: they don't directly mock the cliche, they just subvert it and leave the player puzzled as to why they can't find a good old magical longsword friggin' anywhere. Oh, the elderly hive lady who outright mocked adventurers was a hoot. I wouldn't mind a hidden gem like that! We're good on the "no chosen one" thing. And the chain bikini/boobplate thing is put to rest, probably. I mentioned in the other tropes thread that having no Tolkien races would be nice, but at least it looks like Obsidian's direction is certainly different enough. There's also cliche and heartbreaker fantasy, and I definitely don't want the latter implementation; but I think Obsidian is preventing that from happening, given the technical bits we know so far, so... I'll just say I'd like Obsidian to avoid the D&D bestiary. There are just too many assumptions built into them, though creating an amalgam of two things and giving it a different name and ethology wouldn't be bad. No "purely evil orc" race and that sort of stupid nonsensical cliche.

Interesting. I wondered what that meant, and I had never heard the term "artistic fraternity" before. I'm still waiting for more cool stuff from the Obsidian artist who originally did the first Sagani pic. As a side comment about the lockpicking business--did the mage spell Knock have a chance to fail? I never actually used it...

There's nothing like speaking in the royal We and claiming omniscient representation of all backers to completely invalidate your post. (And "gravitas"? wtf are you on?) Why? I don't know what the state of lockpicking was like a few hundred years ago, but I know that now there are myriad lockpicks and that picks rarely break. This is a strict mechanics thing. Percentage probabilities can be unfair or plain illogical while being only 10 completely arbitrary skill points below an action is also too unforgiving. It's either a +lockpicks bonus or +thieving skills potion, perhaps... but mechanical elegance would be nice ultimately, without placing too much of a burden on the player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nogNV13TA-A

The poll would be so much better if "male nudity" was its own section of the poll, but by its design, it's pretty obvious what the OP really wants in the game. (@OP: Rent a video. Really. It's way better than what you can get in any game even with uncanny valley sex, and even stuff on the internet is way better for what you actually want. Isometric? Dude...)

It bothers me that children somehow believe "mature" and "adult" is defined only by "sex." It's kind of like how parents tell kids "not until you're older" for something and those kids end up completely and utterly obsessed that it's the defining feature of "adultness." So sad. Wow, what a horrible poll. Ahahahaha, good joke! Though I suppose people who didn't actually read the KS page might actually believe you, so that would be bad... Aw, this thread is going to end well...

Eh, all the IE games had a combination, so I'm suuuuure Obsidian will have something for that. I'd like full transcripts kept in the journal area between sessions. Combat log and dialogue log in separate tabs of the text box. Also--http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61246-combat-log/ and http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/59968-scrolling-text-log-for-dialog-and-combat/

I don't remember an explicit dev quote, but I believe it has to do with the magic cooldown mechanics of holistic class and combat mechanics design. Remember the casting cd mechanics? I won't review because the information is all over the place and people can just do a search--though people like the OP who refuse to actually read anything, yeah, I have only pity for you and no patience for your immature hysteria. Anyway, back to the point. Two words: resource management. Resource management is critical in tactical gameplay of this nature. So basically rather than force the rest-resource management only on caster classes, Obsidian combined a few proposed mechanics to apply that high-level resource management to all classes. In other words, it's a good move in theory, just needs specific numerical tweaking and whatnot.

Baldur's Gate used three different types of exposition for different reasons (at least by my analysis)... Even non-game-engine cinematics have their place when used sparingly. The static-image-VO-narration type is useful when the technology can't emulate events, textual imagination far outstrips direct visuals, and/or it's impossible to include the necessary variety of NPCs in a cinematic. One example is the BG1 dream sequence narration, where an attempted cinematic visual would be far less rich in terms of abstract ambience. Another example is the sea voyage in BG2 when the ship is attacked by those, uh, fish-men; for one, the game engine couldn't support sprites acting underwater and secondly, a cinematic wouldn't make sense because there was no way to show your own party and even your PC (choice of party members, PC sex/race/etc.). I think in general the static-image-VO-narration exposition is most flexible, but the other types have their places too. Though the biggest weakness would also be, as LC said, whether you like the narrator's presentation or not--I had just re-started IWD a little while ago and didn't care for the narrator's voice and reading style. There could be an option to disable narrator VO, I guess. The game-engine cutscenes that are acted out and VO'ed by NPCs outside the player's view are basically an extension of the omnipresent 3rd person narrator voice in books (the reader = the player); I think this is a fine method to further the narrative holistically and less immersion-breaking (for an iso game) than a full cinematic, but I can see how some RPers would hate it as being less immersive if we take the view that the player should know nothing of outside events except when directly involved. I don't know how the latter view can be addressed with any exposition, I guess. Examples include the chapter cut-scenes in BG2, like Irenicus taking over the asylum, and the final party NPC battles at the end of PS:T. Now, game-engine cutscenes when the PC is present on the scene and cannot act---not a fan of those in general. While they might further the narrative, I'd rather have the style above. Cinematics can be used well, just not how they're used most of the time these days. I think they're better for particular action sequences that may be awkward to describe in text and don't exactly require subtle ambience (e.g. BG2:SoA end, Irenicus' end); or if a video is actually "better" than a pure textual-narration presentation--this can be tricky and easily overdone. Examples here would, I think, include the BG1 final cinematic of Sarevok's statue and the final PS:T cinematic. (Obviously, I'm sure plenty of people will argue that a pure textual narration is still fine for stuff like that.) Now, having said that, I think all styles have their places and can be used well, but since games have moved completely away from the first style into lots of cinematics, then we definitely need more of the narrated exposition.

No word yet. If there is such a spell, then I don't want the items (specifically armour/jewelry or weapons) to be unequippable. With the risk of a curse, but whatever. I think it'd be nifty if specific magical abilities were discovered over use instead, with the option to take an item to a magic expert for full identification. For example, you find a mace. You can tell by the fact that your soul flows more freely through it that it has magical properties, but you're not sure what. You decide to wield it for now. After smacking a nasty critter with it and seeing that it does some fire damage, you "identify" that aspect of its enchantment yourself, and it appears on the item description. Or you find a helm, and after putting it on, discover you can see better at night; but maybe there's an on-use shield effect you hadn't figured out, and that has to be fully identified with an expert.

I don't think it would work well either and would be too awkward to implement; it's true that riddles in general would have to be translated anyway, but there are other ways to make the "multiple choice" aspect less obvious. Modern CRPGs these days give only 3-4 dialogue options at most for NPC interactions, so riddles under those conditions are generally lame. PS:T, however, could have dialogue options up to around 20 or so. Add 15 possible riddle answers and suddenly the playing field widens considerably. Besides, there are other creative ways to implement the riddle mechanic. In BG2, there was a room containing riddles that could only be solved by physical objects.

Well, they can start working on ports AFTER the release of PC version, using money earned from sales on PC. That money is far, far better used for the expansion (they said they're not using KS money for the expansion) and PC-only sequels with a hundred times more content than a weak and super-expensive console port could ever manage.

Okay, I'll explain why this idea is a complete waste of time: The reason why in-game web browsers are useful for MMOs is because you can't pause an MMO. All IE games, all SP games in general, can be paused. So you can alt-tab and open a web browser if necessary. Adding an in-game web browser to PE would be stupid. Extra development work for zero gain. I can't believe someone would be that lazy in an SP game.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60371-narrated-sequences-instead-of-cutscenes-lets-use-our-imagination-again/

What the hell? As if an in-game MMO-style web browser requiring a net connection is actually better? Damn, I think I'd rather have the quest blinkers...

That would be rather hard on the armor. I'd have to spend too much gold getting the burn marks polished off all the time. So long as you make sure you're wearing steel chain or plate, you can be your own Faraday cage and see only the visual lightning reminder! IT'S PERFECT.

LOL. Console players.... unable to do a simple Google or forum search. Couch-convenience indeed.

I definitely agree with this; overview information about general processes in a traditionally black box business is already interesting to me, but there's no reason to get into particularly fine details because project management can be fluid with respect to timelines and the same goes with budget. It's completely unreasonable to expect Obsidian to somehow defend their particular business choices--budget, really?--when the players have no experience in the business and development end of things to begin with. Ignorant entitlement at its best. This was still a Kickstarter, not a private startup investment scheme.

Fortunately, I don't remember this nonsense in the IE games at all, and Obsidian didn't make those games you mentioned (so I don't know how "no more" would apply unless they were in Fallout or something). All the clues should be in the dialogic or random item texts. Read, people! READ!

In PS:T, just make your INT/WIS/CHA stats low and plenty of characters won't talk to you much. Granted, the setup works primarily if you don't bother trying to talk to everyone, too. The only problem with that is that the combat was kinda meh... (Also, a general reminder that the "Fallout 1 & 2" poll option really should be just the Fallouts in general including NV, but I could no longer edit the poll.)

As the others say. Mixing combat mechanics with character storyline is bad for a poll. The combat AI should be moderately independent (e.g. for players who aren't so great at full tactical combat) and easily turned off for full control. And customizable a fair bit as well. The character storyline should be highly independent, a true "characterization" as it were. IMO.

All's fair--if BG was 5 CDs back then, then I expect 5 DL-DVDs/Blurays in 2014. Of course, as others have said, the download will be the hard part. I don't know how much faster and available broadband will be across the world by 2014. I also have my doubts that Project Eternity would end up on hardcopy retail shelves.... Could Obsidian do a very basic POD for just the install discs (for a fee), I wonder? Hm.

Well, I really like this original Sagani painted concept pic,and hope whoever did it gets to do the other art too. It's fine as IWD-style anyway (and assuming the artist is already internal, then must be cheaper ).