Nivenus

I recently played through the first Fallout and I liked what they had there: with a high enough Speech skill and Charisma value you could talk your way out of most of everything... but it wasn't easy. I think players should definitely be given the option to use conversation to get out of most of the game's hazardous situations and to earn rewards, but they should have to invest in that option, just as a warrior character would have to invest in their weapons skills. What I wouldn't like is for it to be like Dragon Age II or the later Mass Effect games (although I liked all three of the aforementioned) where your persuasive ability was in many cases a function of simply choosing the right option in dialogue, resulting in automatic success if you choose the right option and an automatic failure if you choose the wrong one. There should always be a slight chance of failure, even at higher levels, and you should always (IMO) have to invest in one or more social skills to really talk your way out of "anything."

I'll admit to being unfamiliar with that franchise, although I know of it.

Mark Morgan would be a good choice. Jeremy Soule as well, although I feel his style is a bit too generic for Obsidian. I'd also put Inon Zur out there as a possibility - his work for Dragon Age: Origins isn't anything special outside of a couple themes, but he brought some serious AAA work (IMO) to Dragon Age II as well as both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Lastly, I loved the music Mark Griskey did for The Sith Lords so if he's available, I'd be happy to see him turn up as well. EDIT: I'm unfamiliar with Justin Bell, so I can't speak to his credentials but if Obsidian thinks he's the right man for the job, I have faith that they'll make a strong choice.

I like this idea. NPCs noticing the things that the player does (within reason) is always a nice touch.

Depends on how you define "original." If you mean "never done before" than, yes, you are correct. Non-evil undead and good necromancers aren't terribly original. But then, almost nothing under the sun is. If you mean "not very common" or "not mainstream," which is what I'm guessing the poster was going for (and is what people often really mean when they say "original"), then there's an argument to be made that those concepts are indeed original. The main exception to evil undead tends to be vampires, who often get the angst treatment very frequently (for better or worse). But aside from Planescape: Torment and World of WarCraft I'm not sure I can actually think of an example featuring "good" or even clearly nonevil zombies. EDIT: In retrospect it appears I may not have been reading carefully enough; the poster you were quoting didn't even use the term "original," so my semantic argument is moot, though not particularly pointless I think, since it still highlights why the poster may have requested the concept.

Everyone keeps on assuming guns = steampunk. That is simply false and belies an unfortunately common misconception about medieval warfare. As many, many posters have pointed out, guns existed long before the modern steam engine was invented and quite a bit before it became widespread. Furthermore, guns coexisted with more "traditional" fantasy arms like swords, pikes, and even bows for a couple centuries easily enough. Hell, plate armor postdates the invention of firearms: Gothic plate armor first gained popularity in the 16th century, which is two hundred years after hand cannons were introduced and one hundred after the introduction of arquebuses.

There's so many different varieties of undead (vampires, ghosts, zombies, etc.) that I think Obsidian has plenty of material to work with if they decide to include undead in the game (which I expect they will since they're nearly ubiquitous in SF&F at this point). That said, I hope that if they do include undead there's more consequence to them than stacks of XP to slaughter. Vampires should be extraordinarily dangerous adversaries, ghosts shouldn't be dispersed with a wave of a sword, and zombies, if they show up, should actually be threatening. So I voted for "yes, but they should be horrifying." Because really, isn't that the entire point?

I liked the idea Storm of Zehir's dialogue system as well, though at times I felt like I had too much control over whether my companions could pipe up or not. As a result, none of the characters really resonated with me or felt real. I'd rather that they pop in to say something when it's useful, whether or not you ask them to or not - just like an actual person might in real-life.

In that case, what are you personally hoping to see in terms of factions and how the player will interact with them? I'm interested to know your thoughts and apologies if you found the poll options to be distracting from the discussion. Well, to start with I like the idea of having opposing factions like in Fallout: New Vegas (though it need not be so dualistic as the Legion/NCR conflict was) and the idea that you can really only gain favor with one if you oppose the other. It would also be nice to be able to join factions and rise through their ranks (though I'm of a mind that there should be prerequisites and limits to how far you can rise - beggar to master of three separate guilds seems absurd on the face of it). And I'd love it if companions had opinions about the factions, down to encouraging or opposing player participation in one of the factions (I'd even welcome the idea that they might leave the party if sufficiently upset). Class-oriented guilds are something I'm okay with, though I feel they should be more profession-oriented and act more like real-life trading unions, with an emphasis on protecting the interests of that specific group rather than generic fighting, thieving, or spellcasting. Thieves' guilds in particular, as usually rendered in RPGs, seem terribly purposeless in my mind - what exactly do they do other than to highlight the fact that, yes, a rogue/thief class exists? Generally a guild requires some kind of sanction from the powers that be and I can't see any government allowing the formation of a guild that specifically promotes the "profession" of thievery. If you want something vaguely analogous to a thieves' guild your best bet is some kind of criminal syndicate, which has far different implications. Fair enough. I assume the factions will be integrated into the storyline and world-building, so I'll skip that option (which would otherwise be my top choice). I'll go with "factions that are in conflict with one another." Looking at the map again there definitely do seem to be "major" regions and "lesser" regions, although I wouldn't say those necessarily correspond to factions. The Free Palatinate of Dyrwood is the only that particularly strikes me as definitely a faction name and not just a region, but the Ruins of Eir Glanfiath and White March seem much more likely to simply be toponyms. In any case, I suppose the name "Free Palatinate" does actually imply the existence of another faction... namely an empire of some kind, since the name comes from the term "county palatine" which referred to semi-autonomous areas within kingdoms and empires of pre-modern Europe.

I think that the problem with (unmodded) New Vegas stealth gameplay using companions was more a factor of how the basic fundamentals of Bethesda's playstyle (which Obsidian inherited) are very much designed without companions in mind. You can't really manage companions in games like Skyrim or Fallout 3 and even with the options Obsidian presented in FO:NV, you're pretty limited in what you can do. I'm guessing, given Obsidian's statements so far about this being an RPG with a heavy emphasis on tactics in combat, that you'll have a much greater degree of control, down to telling party members to wait in one location or go into stealth mode themselves. You know... like in Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights 2, or Dragon Age: Origins.

As covered in the "What we know..." thread, J.E. Sawyer has already confirmed that guns will be a relatively recent invention and fairly uncommon in the gameworld. So I'm thinking it'll mostly be flintlocks and arquebuses, with maybe the occasional musket. Less advanced than steampunk, in other words.

The poll seems a bit odd to me. None (or at least very few) of the answers for the first question are mutually exclusive and the second question makes unjustified assumptions about the game world (we don't know, for instance, that any of those names corresponds to a faction). I'm interested in a discussion about how factions would work in "Project Eternity" but the poll seems an odd way of going about and promoting such a dialogue.

Really? I thought that Caesar's Legion was one of the more original and interesting ideas of New Vegas. And they weren't any hokier theme-wise than any of the original tribal gangs when it comes right down to it.

I voted "yes" because I kind of like the idea, but at the same time I don't think the dev team should make it a priority. Add them once the basics are covered, but don't design the game with the intent of having the little miscellaneous details. I'd much rather, for instance, see proper modding support that allows the fans to add things like this in.

I don't quite get the claim that achievements are immersion breaking. I never once lost interest in the world of <i>Fallout: New Vegas</i> because I gained an achievement. To me, it's no different than any user interface gimmick - it's there, and sure, it's not realistic, but if you find that bothersome you're thinking too much about it. Within a couple seconds it's gone.

I agree with the central point here. Sex is part of a relationship, it's not the end goal or a trophy to win. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if there is sex and romance in "Project Eternity" there should both be sexless (or very low on the sex) romances and casual sex as well as the standard fare of sex + romance. Forcing the fantasy world to be politically correct certainly harms beliavility. In my point of view, of course. I have no issues with having only gay romances in the game. Or only straight. Or any kind of mix. As long as it's not just for the sake of it and/or marketing. Here's the thing: I agree with you in principle (that fantasy worlds shouldn't be written so as to automatically fit our modern cultural mores), but that ax swings both ways. After all, bisexuality was practiced widely in Classical Greece, as well as throughout both Imperial China and feudal Japan. While aversion to homosexuality was certainly the norm in many cultures, it was far from a universal attitude in pre-modern cultures.

Ok, thank wikipedia for this, but apparently here is the history. 1. Arquebus - early 16th century, sucked, only good in large vollies, bow/xbow = better 2. Musket, ok, better than bow and xbow @ 16th century in most situations 3. Rifle, way better, bow/xbow = useless Quote: "The cost of gunpowder also gradually fell. By the 16th century the handheld firearm became commonplace, replacing the crossbow and longbow in all advanced armies" If you have guns, then all bows/xbows are useless in the world (or should be). The arquebus was quickly improved. Sucky guns were only around for a short time. Best not to have them at all unless you want to trivialize bows/xbows. Except in your own words, bows were better than arquebuses and occasionally (and situationally) better than muskets. My point is, yes, guns were altogether, taken as a whole, an improvement in technology over longbows. But they didn't phase them out or obsolete them completely. Nor did they eliminate the (much more inefficient) yumi in Sengoku era Japan. Different tools for different purposes.

Until relatively recently I'd never actually played any of the Infinity Engine games (and I still haven't finished any of them, though I'm closing in on PS:T). So that really wasn't that big of a factor in winning me over to the project, though I'm happy for those who are seeing a resurgence of the sub-genre they love (isometric RTWP RPGs). So I'd have to say "multiple games" with the games in question being the likes of The Sith Lords, Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, and Fallout: New Vegas. Of those TSL gets the most credit, since it was what originally won me over as a fan of Obsidian - the other games simply ensured I stuck around through the company's trials. Honestly, I'm just happy to see Obsidian branching off and making their own IP the way they want to.

English longbows were superior to early guns in certain qualities. They had better range and accuracy, for example, in addition to reloading more quickly. Crossbows I'll grant you though - they're essentially low power guns.

The main limiting factor of early firearms was their reload time and their low penetration force (compared with rifles), not their accuracy. Most battles weren't conducted at a long enough range to make flintlocks terribly inaccurate.

I think Obsidian has been pretty upfront that this is not using either the D&D license or d20 mechanics. They've said from the beginning that they'll be making the game with their own rules system. Additionally, given Obsidian's track record, I'd say it's fair to say the game will try to subvert several expectations about the genre (both as an RPG and a fantasy game).

Congratulations, Obsidian! Hopefully the donations will go further Also, good news for Mac fans who will now be getting a version of "Project Eternity" as well. Myself, I prefer Windows/PC, but I'm always a supporter of multiplatform releases.

I'll admit it: I like achievements. Quite a bit actually. The thing is, I don't really see anything about achievements as a negative, except perhaps that some people too often use gamerpoints or similar systems as some kind of metric for judging how cool or "hardcore" of a gamer they are. But that's really just about people being narcissistic jerks, not whether or not the game has an achievement system or not. To be honest, I don't see achievements as all that different from the way most RPGs mark your quest progress. It's just another, more universal way of doing it.

To be fair, in NWN2 it turned out you weren't quite as ordinary as you thought. But yes, there are a lot of examples of the "peasant turned hero" storyline to draw upon, which be a plus or a minus depending on how you choose to view it.

Tim Cain's already confirmed firearms at this point, so it's sort of a moot point. That said, I do have a preference for what kind of firearms we'll see. I'm hoping that the game aims for something akin to the Late Middle Ages or early Gunpowder Age, where firearms had begun to become prominent, but swords, armor, and polearms hadn't yet been rendered obsolete. That kind of mixed arms tactics could be pretty interesting in combat and has the added benefit of being a level of technology not typically explored by fantasy.