Ieo

Maybe OP forgot s/he cast Protection From Evil on Haer'dalis.

Baldur's Gate had this to some extent. The streets would be come deserted except for the "night life" in some cases; vendors would close shop at night in both BG1 and BG2, that I remember. That was a nice touch, and I certainly would like to see that at least to the same level.

Really, I think the opposite would be true: It'd be better if Obsidian made a top-down design decision about it much earlier, but then I'm also of the mind that any publicized decision (very hard or impossible to take back, as it were) cannot and should not be questioned on its face, rather the discussions could move on to more granular topics around the fuzzy edges. For example--Obsidian made the high-level decision to not include consoles, multiplayer, or full VO. There are very tangible technical and content reasons for those decisions, but that they are made and thus attached to the label of "game nature" means to me that mature people should understand there's no point in arguing. Some passerby with no knowledge or who can't bother doing a search might start up again, but it's easier to shut down noise with a high-level decision or divert the statement to the granular--and IMO more interesting--levels. Edges are fuzzy on many design decisions like cooldowns, kill xp, "romance" content. I don't believe the former two should be removed from the proposal, for example, but there's whole lot of room to make them work broadly so most people will be happy. The same applies to romance content, IMO. There are ways to fully compromise with equal bromance/romance content both in quantity and quality, but it's up to Obsidian how they might want to implement; if they came right out and said "Party romances are in but they will not be a major section of content at all," then at least discussions could move towards the nature of that content whether in dialogic text or quests. Same with "Party romances are out, but there will be other NPC content concerning love and the like." (Well, I suppose the biggest risk is spoiling anything.) There have been plenty of more granular posts in the various locked romance threads and this one that get drowned out by either side wanting or not wanting it on its face, but that never goes anywhere. I will never ascribe higher intrinsic value to "romance" versus other forms of love because of media's immature take on human relations (genre problem), but if Obsidian could assure everyone that they would equally balance content quantity and quality, that would go a long way to making the Romance Ouroboros go away. Edit: Dammit, Jasede! LOL. Also, grammar FTL.

I suspect there will be a "price" to many different paths in Project Eternity, but keep in mind that Obsidian is not designing the world in terms of alignment (good/evil) at all, rather different motives--based on culture, race, the ends of a quest, whatever. This means some paths will be closed off simply by mutually exclusive choice. I fully expect the factions to work this way. So given that, much of the discussion on good/evil is moot... Live Q&A

Eh, it's been known for a long while now (dev interviews) that they're doing BG-style partial VO. The rest is text. Like it should be.

I agree with you there, because socialization into gender roles begins from birth. Also, the primary underlying requirement for female Disney main characters is that they lack "purpose" or "value" or are "incomplete" as heroines until they're matched with a male partner. The opposite isn't true for boy films. I think only Pixar's recent Brave broke the pattern. I facepalm about how many women still place ridiculous value on the wedding day but not the future beyond--I have this vague memory about writing a post on how romance in the media alters perceptions of what's reasonable in partner behavior, one reason why I personally hate the genre. Edit: Oh, that was probably off-topic a bit.

I've been funding Kickstarters for more than a year and a half now. If you're actually the sort of person that would be a part of Kickstarter's audience pre-DFA, you knew exactly what you were getting into and probably wouldn't feel too bad about something falling apart. With post-DFA backers treating it like an extended pre-order system, there's bound to be a ****storm. I funded a game back in March 2011 that was supposed to come out seven months ago, and it's obviously far from finished. The people who donated to that seem to mostly be scientists in the fields of neurobiology and genetics, and they've been extremely supportive and understanding. Would a major Kickstarter's audience be equally supportive of a long delay? I'm not sure. I frankly don't think these new people realize what goes into making games. The big issue I'm seeing is watching people make business and money decisions when they really don't have a clue as to what they're really doing, what Kickstarter really is, what the risks are, etc. This new set of backers is acting like they're buying a product, and the conflating of "early product pre-order" and what Kickstarter actually does are leading to some serious problems. We're building a house of cards and it's only going to take one big flop to cause it to come crashing down. Yeah, and that's what we saw here with PE--it was a preorder storefront (I gave my analysis for that rationale in a different thread). This reminds me of Sawyer who commented... what did he say.... about backing that KS thing by.... Anita Sarkeesian, I think... and possibly losing his money.... Okay, this is going to drive me nuts trying to find the quote. Anyone know what I'm trying to remember? (Maybe I can do that before the edit window closes. ) Everyone who worked on Haunted had prior experience in games, both P&P and videogames, with the main guy being one of the founders of Cryptic which launched City of Heroes. Interesting. Yeah, I dunno then. Calculations are off. I mean, $25,000? Like nikolokolus says, there's not a lot of room in that....

Since PE is my first KS, my question concerning that project would be: What are the dev pedigrees and just how much game industry experience do they actually have in both programming and the business end? (Extremely different) There's nothing on Wikipedia about Mob Rules Games. The reason why I backed PE is twofold: Obsidian is a major developer studio with a significant pedigreed history in the industry for AAA titles and thus should have a firm handle on the project management and costing aspects. Moreover, I think it would be easier to "downscale" the business end of things from that higher end to a KS homegrown. Obsidian is betting their industry reputation on this; it's fair to say there's no room for failure. (No pressure, Obsidian.) And naturally, the second reason is for the genre. As a side note, I wonder if multiplayer games are by their nature more expensive to create and QA than singleplayer.

*snort* *cough* Yeah, sure. Moving along.

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. The Unity engine is new technology. The screenshot is an old-school deliverable. PE's area maps will be rendered in static 3D and hand-painted for the 2D look, so it's new technology in the old-school style.

The $250 tier on Kickstarter included dev signatures on the collector's edition box, not the book. A signed book is $500 (and higher, I guess). Thanks for the reminder on the book add-on issue; I was pretty sure it wouldn't be one but lost track of stuff (geez, PE information is like a pinata explosion across the internets).

I just wanted you to know that I had refreshed that page of the thread and the first thing I see is the Hulk grabbing is own ass. Thanks. ಠ_ಠ ....ಠ_ಠ Oh boy, that's a big one. There were a significant number of women in the U.S. who were against suffrage. There were slaves who were against emancipation. And while on the surface it seems completely illogical, there's a lot going on sociologically and psychologically. Just one reason why cultural change is slow. (Heck, one of the most misogynistic people I know is a woman.) To rephrase a line from my favorite webcomic, Digger, "I have no more love of pointless ritual than you do, but I fear for the loss of our traditions. After all, without tradition, what protection do any of my siblings and I have except the good will of (men)?" That's a sad thought. P.S.: Still not forgiving you for the Hulk ass.

I wondered how that movie would be viewed overseas. I mean, I know it was a huge deal for the Scottish tourism board thinger--dunno how that turned out.

I'm surprised another extremely powerful method of spell interruption wasn't mentioned with regard to the IE games. Invisibility. Staff of the Magi in BG2 was the most ridiculously overpowered thing in any game I had ever played (though maybe I hadn't played that many, I dunno). That and a few invisibility potions on the scout.

Well, kudos about the James Bond movie. Sudden sociopolitical change is always historically violent. No one really wants that, though sometimes it's unavoidable, so the generational-cultural change is a slow immersive burn across as many communication channels as it takes. The gaming industry won't be spared this either, ultimately. It's interesting to see "women tropes" specifically highlighted these days in even niche venues like this. It reminds me very much of the intense, highly publicized analysis of Pixar's film Brave, their first film to feature a female lead. One such analysis included this: Eventually, there will come a time when this sort of thing is never talked about anymore in common conversation because the norms have so slowly shifted. Anyway, I do want to thank Josh & Obsidian for taking these small steps. They do add up.

MP didn't add anything to those games: They added the opportunity to socialize to those games. The thing a lot of proponents fail to realize is that adding content value is absolutely not the same as sharing an experience with a friend--yeah, you can go to the movie theatre by yourself, or you will probably enjoy it more if you went with a friend. Guess what? That has nothing to do with the movie itself. But MP does affect content design in a negative way for primarily SP games. This is why co-op players should stick with games designed from the outset to be ground-up MP. I added an interview reference to your post, by the way. The question started with console controls, but the discussion goes to the co-operative experience. I play MMOs for the social-game fix, otherwise.

What kind of mechanics would that be? We know there will already be positioning bonuses... Although I'm hoping enemy AI will be good enough to try to compensate for backstab attacks after the first jab. Rogues also have a ton of utility outside combat, besides which the flexible classes probably means we can create a fighting build somehow.

The gibberling masses are great too. Having two wizards may seem redundant, but given how grimoires will work (supposedly), it will be Vancian-style in that we choose which spells to put in there, so you could ostensibly have two wizards casting totally different spells (except for the "basic" ones, which we know nothing about at the moment). As for the special physical/magic combo effects, such an implementation seems more appropriate for a 3D zoom free-rotating camera environment.... i.e. MMOs (or any other SP game of that technological style).

Attacking the same target isn't "working together" in my book. You first need to get out of the MMO headspace for this. In quite a lot of IE-style tactical combat, there are multiple targets anyway. Taking out a party of 6 using a party of 6 is an example of the height of IE tactical combat.

I remember Sawyer (I think, maybe a dev post instead of interview/Q&A) mentioning that spell combos are great and they'll try to work it in (like casting grease and then setting it on fire), but beyond that, dunno. Beyond that, I don't understand the reasoning of your post. "Doing their own thing"--I mean, you're fully controlling your party anyway. By virtue of party members performing combat together, none of them are off "doing their own thing." Wait, I think I know what the problem is-- You cannot compare party dynamics in a single-player game to an MMO.

OMG, LadyCrimson. I'll just quote myself from the other thread and skip the long-windedness. It (wide gradient of human emotion) does (matter), which is why my proposed mechanical solution for perfectly parallel and exclusive "Y" paths covers everything. Main branch: get-to-know-you Left branch: romance Right branch: bromance Huzzah! No one ever gets more content than the other and both paths are equally deep, meaningful, and immersive. There is definitely a resource limitation (the 2-3 months per companion bit cited from the interview), which is why fully parallel paths probably aren't possible. If we're looking at a "Y" implementation, then that means the main trunk of content at the bottom there should take up the majority of a companion's writing--like over 70% or whatever--and either of the later branches less since the work would be doubled at that particular point. omg XD

I have absolutely no issue with this. Some people think this is somehow impossible with the amount of resources and time they have though. There is definitely a resource limitation (the 2-3 months per companion bit), which is why fully parallel paths probably aren't possible. If we're looking at a "Y" implementation, then that means the main trunk of content at the bottom there should take up the majority of a companion's writing--like over 70% or whatever--and either of the later branches less since the work would be doubled at that particular point.

It does, which is why my proposed mechanical solution for perfectly parallel and exclusive "Y" paths covers everything. Main branch: get-to-know-you Left branch: romance Right branch: bromance Huzzah! No one ever gets more content than the other and both paths are equally deep, meaningful, and immersive. Wait, this thing is still going, huh. ... I'll go eat breakfast now.

No. If the fundamental premise of Project Eternity required a Kickstarter in the first place instead of AAA published backing, then that means this is niche and maybe many of us have no interest in what's "popular" as it pertains to the original scope. I'm sure part of the aversion (besides the whole "lol Youtube" thing) stems from the fact that many here do not want more people who prefer a different game genre to come in and ask for sandbox play with 3D rotating camera and cinematics; it's bad enough that a number do that already. Skyrim players are not the primary target audience. Would it be nice of new players from other genres discover PE and like it? Yes, but on the merits of the gameplay itself and not a Youtube hit of the moment. And back to my "too many HIRE THIS PERSON" point--music is 100% subjective. Unlike any other inclusion in a game world I can think of, you cannot reduce music to a numerical content argument (whereas it's possible with another subjective topic like romances). Music must fit the lore and granular setting, and no one but Obsidian knows how that will work, so claiming one's 100% subjective tastes will fit comes off as childish. I mean, I enjoy Muzsikás, Hedningarna, and Luka Šulić & Stjepan Hauser, but it's not my business to tell Obsidian or try to convince anyone else that they would definitely "improve"* Project Eternity. * Although the last two totally would because cello >>>>> everything.

Like in BG1, BG2, PS:T (dunno about IWD), the game should end. These are narrative-based games, not open-world exploration like Skyrim, so the epilogues and such would create closure; otherwise continued adventure with companions after that would make no sense. There's another thread on the General forum about this too. An expansion would be different but still self-contained.