The Sharmat

Way too much time and money would be spent on such a contest. It'd be a logistical nightmare. Voice acting requires more than a microphone.

This can be a trap though. In some cases in recent games, the characters with romance arcs are the best developed and have the most content...IF you romance them. If not, be prepared to have a total of three conversations with them because going further ends with them mind controlling your character into having sex with them.

Bringing in Bioware is not only pretty much impossible, but doing that would mean involving EA, which would defeat the entire purpose of this project.

Bioware has actually learned a tiny bit. There's GLIMMERS of decent romances in a few arcs. There's just...a lot of problems on top of them. The main thing is it should flow naturally. You shouldn't be able to get someone to fall in love with you in a totally isolated conversation branch that only takes place in the party hub/inn/Ebon Hawk. It should derive from actions in the game world. And don't try to make every character that may be a fan favorite romancable. I don't care if he/she is your favorite character. They may just not be into you. Quality over quantity, what makes sense for the story and characters, etc... EDIT: Oh, and no accidental romances. conversely, would be kind of cool to see a companion get increasingly depressed/jealous/angry if you behaved in a way that would trigger a romance sub plot but you ignored/shot them down. Or maybe that's too soap opera...

I would kill for a khopesh. And with a khopesh. I get the "historically accurate" requests though. Yeah, it's not a real history. But most real world weapons and armor were shaped the way they were for a reason. Doesn't mean we can't have variety. I'm also guessing in those Dark Souls screenshots that the sword is so huge simply to make it easier to pick out for the player. Graphics have to be easy to read, not just realistic or pretty.

Depends on how the magic works. If it's really rare you'll still need all those things.

And vice versa.

Pauldrons. Pauldrons everywhere.

Coop multiplayer would add a tremendous cost to development. That's a ton more coding.

I want as much player choice as possible. That means being the bad guy. Just as long as it's not cartoon super-villainy like in a lot of Bioware moral dilemmas.

I've never liked the vancian magic system and I really hope they don't use it.

There's lots of things you could do with it. Not just one character showing concern for another, but noticing that one character has some exotic means of healing. Or say, an interaction along the lines of "Dude, your leg was nearly cut off and now you're standing on it fine. What's the hell's going on?" to reveal something about less...baseline human party members.

Several of those took me less than 50 hours to complete.

Yeah I thought tieflings were people with a dab of fiendish blood. Something like fourth generation hybrids where the demon is really watered down.

It would be another way to avoid limiting companion and NPC interaction to completely isolated "Do you have some time to talk" options in whatever your party hub is. Dialogue triggered by certain characters sustaining injuries would be neat.

You know the maidens will end up being horrible man eating demons or something, right?

Well yeah, just because you have a strong soul doesn't necessarily mean your offspring will. I'd expect such an inheritance based system to rely far more on wealth acquired by superhuman ancestors, which would be a volatile thing since it's vulnerable to market collapse and mis-management. Perhaps a more Roman/Athenian sort of deal where there is a strong middle class plus an aristocracy with a certain degree of power; but compared to say, medieval France it's quite vestigial and doesn't exclude upward mobility.

Obsidian has done things besides save the world storylines. And even then, you can be 'evil' and save the world. Can't rule something that's dead. And that's assuming you're a 'conquer-the-world' sort of evil and not a 'I murder people in back alleys for money' sort of evil.

They're holding some stuff back so there's a steady build in anticipation and, hopefully, a corresponding steady increase in pledges instead of it being all or nothing spurts at the start and end of the cycle. At least that's what I took from the statement

If magic is common and simply a matter of learning I'd expect that the nobility/leadership of any given nation would all have magic to some degree or another, for the same reason that in medieval Europe most of the landowning aristocracy would fight as heavy cavalry. They have the money for the necessary equipment and the spare time to train because they aren't subsistence farmers. That doesn't seem to be the case here though. If magic requires a "strong soul" then it sounds like most people simply could never have it.

You can have unique elves and dwarves. Using the basic concept as a skeleton for something different has been done. Some examples I can think of in terms of Elves: A Song of Ice and Fire's Children of the Forest: Actually kind of small, creepy, and utilize some sort of global neural network where ancestors upload into trees and spy on people. The Second Apocalypses Cunuroi/Nonmen: Don't even have pointy ears but hey're clearly intended to be an elf analogue. Tall, hairless, pure white, with "perfect" but alien features like fused teeth. Ancient and advanced, but with entirely different neural architecture (They're unable to see 2 dimensional images as representations fo 3 dimensional objects) and a species wide variety of Alzheimers. Can only remember important events in their lives by inflicting post traumatic stress on themselves after awhile. Morrowind's Dunmer/Altmer/Bosmer: Hoo boy there's a lot of these literally based on D&D derivatives but still hugely divergent. Altmer/High Elves are eugenicists that live in cities made of crystal, have numbers for names, worship a time when time was nonlinear, and discard any infant that doesn't live up to their standards to the extent that to outsiders most Altmer look like siblings. Dunmer/Dark elves are ancestor worshipping neolithic (until recently) necromancers that make armor out of insect chitin and a resin, ash, and bone mix. Bosmer/Wood Elves are obligate carnivores that refuse to harm any native plants (though outside timber is ok), eat their slain foes to gain their strength, and if really pissed off sacrifice hundreds of themselves to form a primal lovecraftian archetype of all beasts to kill a specific target. Glorantha's Aldryami: I know less about this setting but it's pretty wild. The elves in it are literally plants.

By this metric, how many RPGs would you say have been released? Well, outside of JRPGs I guess.

I thought the direct offspring of Succubi were always Succubi in that setting? Isn't that part of why they seduce mortals? Or did Planescape have Incubi too?

I'm reminded of that one place in the Silmarillion where, after Ungoliant attacked and wounded Morgoth, the latter cried out in fear and pain. A near godlike being crying out in fear and pain is a really big deal, as it turns out, and anyone at the site where it occurred could still hear the cry, even thousands of years from then. It never faded.

I just like gameplay and story segregation to be avoided where possible. See: "Why didn't they just give Aeris a phoenix down?" Though of course it's impossible and probably undesirable to avoid it entirely.