Zombra

I want a challenging game with robust mechanics. By "robust" I mean I don't want a game that encourages you to "metagame" it, with nonimmersive tricks such as "pulling" away enemies one at a time to make it easier. I want the challenges to be built with the entire game design in mind, and I want to be rewarded for using all the tools at my disposal creatively, but I want nonintended behavior to be difficult and/or impossible. Does that make sense?

Definitely. I also love it in RPGs when the "Main Quest" stops for a while ... like you literally have no clear direction ... and it's clear that you have no clear direction. I still remember when the spymaster in Morrowind tells you, "I'm not even going to give you the next phase of your mission yet. Go screw around for a while and come back in a few days." In the case of the haunted character, what if he still gets that weird feeling every night, but the ghosts suddenly stop coming? Just as there needs to be urgency to make a strong story convincing, there should also be moments of rest. Constant pressure is just as bad as no pressure. It's no good if I have to sprint so hard for the finish line that I never see any of the cool stuff off the race track.

I think Obsidian can write well enough to leave out the Idiot Ball. At least, I hope so.

It's an interesting recurring theme in the show. It could make a fantastic subplot for the game. Honestly, I hope and believe that Trey and Matt are pushing the envelope like always, and I hope and believe that Obsidian have the guts and integrity to go along with them.

Um, although you seem aware of the distinction between real time and the game clock, you seem to be having some problems with the implications of the difference. Of course you can pause the game indefinitely. Of course time can pass faster or slower in a game than in real life. When Captain Evil threatens to blow up the world in 24 hours, that doesn't mean you have to stay up all night and call in sick to work or you lose the game. Game time and real time are two different things. We all know this. However, game time is still meaningful in any system that pretends to have some basis in reality. When I hear about the Elf King's daughter being kidnapped by a gang of rapists, it's not good for the game to let me file it in a quest log and then forget about it for the next 30 gameplay hours. The King should have motivating dialogue, of course, but in most games that's it! Someone tells you something is urgent, and then nothing happens. Imagine if you were reading a book that played by these same rules. The hero hears about a bomb that's about to go off, then he goes down to the store to buy some candy, calls his girlfriend, takes a nap, and then drives to work. Weeks later, he remembers the bomb and goes to disarm it. The reader is not exactly going to be thrilled by the tension. Yet this is par for the course in almost every CRPG. It's very difficult to care about a character or their conflicts when they can blow off every problem with no consequences. Story conflicts become meaningless.

I think (and hope) that this is an unlikely feature, sheerly because the player character is going to have so many options. Having an NPC who could fall in love with my swamp-dwelling half-ogre, my psychotic OCD dwarvish spelunker, or my equatorial pearl-diving elf with equal facility would require writing so bland as to be meaningless. I'll be just as happy if they don't bother.

Let me reiterate that timers in general are not my favorite motivators, but I do like consequences, particularly sensible ones. I'm also a fan of quests that have several possible resolutions, not just "quest complete" and "quest failed". Resolutions that are kinda "neutral" are great. If you choose to go hunt the bandits, but spend the time to gather a posse first, maybe they will have packed up and moved by the time you get there. So, they're gone, but still at large somewhere else. Is that a success or a failure? But I'm getting off my main point, which is that I hope that the game really lives up to the promise of a normal person forced into a bad situation, and having to do certain things to get out of it. HAVING TO deal with it. I don't like a game where I feel like I can just sit around farming carrots for 20 years and that would be fine. I need more motivation than, hey, maybe that citizen lost his library card or something, I guess I'll go talk to him and hope he has a quest. The supernatural angle makes it very interesting and gives a lot of potential to strike at a character whose life is otherwise "safe". If demons come after you every time you dream, then you are damn motivated to get moving, because you can only go so long without sleep. This isn't an arbitrary Fallout style timer, but is a nice, regular kick in the ass to keep you moving. I also want to mention Mass Effect (1) for a couple reasons. Even though there were no timers, the main story conflict was strong enough that I always felt motivated. The fire under my ass was convincing. In that sense, I loved it. The downside ... it was SO convincing that all the side quests I came across seemed pretty meaningless by comparison. There were whole planets that I never even saw in that game. Too busy chasing the MQ. I'm trying to say that urgency is a good, necessary thing, but not too much. If I spend the whole game bleeding to death, desperately trying to catch the doctor who's always just out of reach, I'll be too focused on that to enjoy anything else. But maybe a sense of slowly getting sicker and sicker - with actual gameplay consequences - would be incredible. In truth, I would dearly love an RPG in which my character was offered a crappy rat-killing quest, and it was actually a good decision to say, no, I have more important things to attend to. It never is a good decision, because a character with that extra 10xp for doing that crap quest is always better off. There's no trade-off. Dogged, painstaking completionism is always rewarded. For once I'd like a real incentive to ignore unimportant stuff. Boy, I'm kinda all over the place in this post, aren't I?

Glad to see so much support, guys. Thanks. Yeah. You and I are going to be at opposite ends of this issue, clearly. I enjoy "flower smelling" type games just as much as you do, but again, not all games should be that way, and for a game to have a strong story with strong conflict, it almost can't be that way. There's a big difference between playing a character the way you want to and playing the whole game the way you want to. Playing my character my way is what I want! ... But I don't want a game world that accommodates every personality. I want the world to draw me into the story even if my character would resist it. In fact I am really hoping to be able to make a character who avoids danger, who is naturally afraid of "adventure" ... but who ends up unable to avoid it. As for a "timed quest", yeah, that's a whole debate I didn't really want to get into, but I guess it's inescapable. I agree with you that a ticking clock is a pretty annoying way to motivate a player, especially in an RPG. The Fallout rug-pull of "Ut! It's been 100 days, you lose" could be pretty obnoxious, and despite its harshness, it wasn't a great motivational system because it was too far in the background ... you could easily forget about it if you got distracted, and then suddenly it popped up with game over. I want ghosts coming at my face even, perhaps especially, when I'm not doing anything to provoke them. I want to be damn well motivated to find the Amulet of Ghost Repellent. When I hear about the Amulet in a scary tomb, but ghosts are constantly trying to kill me, I'm going to want to get in that tomb! Then when I get the Amulet of course I expect to discover I've opened up a whole 'nother can of worms.

I LOVE what I am seeing in the updates. This all sounds fantastic, and I really hope we get the role-playing freedom promised here. What I would love to see is a storyline that really coerces the character to participate. New Vegas had a great (though pretty harsh) opening hook. Arcanum opened well, too; bad guys were after you from the start. Fallout of course was very motivating, although the hard time limit has been hotly debated ever since (I don't think it's necessary). This is a great chance for a CRPG to have a story written from the ground up that can include a temperamentally non-heroic, non-adventuresome protagonist. Obviously I don't know what the real plot is, but let's just say the hero is haunted by a ghost for no apparent reason. The ghost appears periodically, wrecking stuff, perhaps hurting people. The "hero" tries running away, but the ghost just keeps showing up, and consequences maybe keep getting worse. People get killed. Companions are lost. The hero starts taking permanent damage or something. Eventually it will get to the point where even the world's biggest coward will have to start looking for clues to deal with the haunting and face the problem head-on. Of course a braver character might just start off going straight for the evil wizard. I just want to make sure that the story will draw in even a more, well, realistic guy, who doesn't necessarily have the cojones to solve every problem by challenging five guys to a battle to the death right off the bat. Now I know there are some "open world" advocates out there who never want to be rushed. They want to take their time, exploring every outhouse and chicken coop in the game, wandering from place to place without a care in the world. They don't want any consequences to ignoring a bad situation. I can totally appreciate that kind of gameplay ... but in this case I say thee nay! I don't have to be forced down the rails through the entire course of the game - in fact it's great if sometimes I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next - but the story should always be looming, and always making me want to resolve it. Open world, do-whatever-you-want-whenever-you-want games can be great, but not every RPG has to be built on that foundation. In fact many good RPGs would be ruined without the sense of urgency that strong plotting provides.

I love social specialists in RPGs, and I would love to make a party leader who had real leadership abilities. I keep thinking back to my fantastic character in Arcanum, a well-bred lady who went about in a fine purple dress. Her magical abilities were minor, but adequate to justify her place in an adventuring group. Her main "power" was her great personality which allowed her to lead a large team of more rough-and-tumble companions. (The companions in Arcanum were wonderful, weren't they?) That character was possible because of Arcanum's classless system. I would love to be able to do a character like that again in Project Eternity, even if Charisma or whatever has no effect on your party size. Hence, I suggest the Nobleman class. What would such a profession look like in terms of abilities? He would be likely to have at least some magical skill, being well-educated, but would certainly not be as powerful as a specialist. The spells he would naturally study might be utilitarian, informational, or cosmetic rather than destructive or combative. He might be trained in the use of dueling type weapons and light armor. He would excel in "formal", one-on-one combat, but might be less effective in large scale brawls. Social skills would be his true fort

Too late. They already announced it. Also, they should forget multilanguage support and do a VGA graphics version for old schoolers. No wait, they should ditch multilanguage support and instead include an optional console controller UI. No wait, they should ditch multilanguage support and include oranges instead. Apples. I meant they should ditch apples and do oranges.

Great post, sea. Soooooo we have new information on the Kickstarter page: FIVE (5) companions in the base game, with the possibility of one, two, or three more when stretch goals are reached. So call it eight (. Compare that with thirty-one (31) in Temple of Elemental Evil. :\ I hope this is a long game. With the same companions in my party every time, I'm not going to be feeling much replay value.

Sorry all ... couldn't use PS:Torment as a springboard for my comments because I never played it for more than a few hours. Can't say why it didn't hold my interest :shrug: Never got far in Baldur's Gate either, and as a result never bothered with the sequel. Loved IWD 1 & 2, played both to the end. Of course there were no companions in those, soooo that experience doesn't inform my thoughts at all for this thread. I did finish Origins and ME 1 & 2 as well, and the "Mass Effect Effect" does seem to be talked about somewhat in the Project: Eternity vision. Super deep characters that stay in the party from game to game? That sounds just like ME, in kind of a bad way. It just feels weird to have these characters following me around forever. And what if I don't have a particular guy in my party at the end of P:E1? All the writing and scripting they do for him for P:E2 will be wasted, unless they use the Bioware "immortal companion stable" model, which I hate. Lastly, I'll mention Temple of Elemental Evil again, which I never quite finished. I think that game comes closest to my ideal model for NPC party members: lots to choose from, some shallower than others, some less obvious than others; many with direct story hooks, at least a few with definite endings to their associations with the team. I would like to see that model used again, hopefully with more characters and more writing on each character, and with more of them having endings to their storylines. It would be great if Spugnoir left the party after gathering 50 scrolls (since scroll gathering is his definite stated purpose), or for Furnok to sneak away once he had x amount of money ... or even if he ran off in the night with the party's money if they racked up enough so he couldn't resist. I've always disliked the sensation of having to fire a good, loyal character to make room for someone newer or stronger because "Well, we can only have 8 people on the team, and I've seen everything you're going to say or do". In a movie or book, once a character has nothing else to contribute, there are no more scenes with them. "Writing out" NPCs in the same way is dramatically interesting, and opens up the opportunity to use other characters. Naturally, there's a gameplay flipside to this: "But I love Minsc! I want to keep him forever!" And I can see that. My problem is that I'm generally interested in every character. The one thing I want to avoid is randomly hiring and firing them just so I can see them all. I'd rather have them leave for a reason, or refuse to join for a reason. You know?

I both like and dislike what I've been reading about the companion characters in the party. Deep stories and so on are great, but there is a downside. Dragon Age is a good example of having a few very deep NPCs to add to the party. The characters in Origins were mostly all fantastic, and I enjoyed them, but there were a couple of issues. 1) The NPCs got so much camera time and were so interesting that I felt my PC was somewhat overshadowed. It felt a lot like I was just there to be a witness to all the cool things happening to these other characters. By necessity, I was somewhat of a voiceless "straight man". I could make decisions that affected the outcomes of some of those stories, but as a role-player, my character's personality didn't really matter, and didn't have a chance to evolve. 2) Again, by necessity, there was a trade-off for such depth: quantity. Every character in Origins was more or less essential to the main storyline (though some less than others). Although you could only have a couple of companions "active" at one time, they were ALL in the party. This kind of killed the replay value for me - I actually tried replaying the game as a different class, but after I was done with the different origin story, there was nothing new left to see. Exact same characters, exact same personal stories, exact same decisions. Again, decisions could be made differently, but it just didn't feel worth it to see the predictable flip sides to the first playthrough. So what are my suggestions? A) Lots of companions. Even if this means some are shallow. Not every companion needs to come with 20 hours of gameplay for their personal questline. (In fact, I'm fine with it if none do, but that's me.) Temple of Elemental Evil and Baldur's Gate nailed it pretty well; I always felt like I had a great deal of choice in who I brought along. B) "Finishable" companions. You don't see this enough. I love to see companion storylines with a beginning, middle, and end. Once you've helped the fallen knight clear his name, maybe he wants to return to court and go back to serving the King instead of following you around for the rest of his life. Once the lovestruck sorceress rescues her fiance, she marries him and quits adventuring. Maybe these characters will come back later, but they don't need to stay in my "stable" until the end of time. And then of course there're the characters who end up having to sacrifice their lives to truly fulfill their destinies. It's just lame to see every NPC default to becoming your eternally devoted servant after completing their other objectives. Make their stories make sense. Maybe a few people will want to sleep in the same room with me every night for the rest of their lives, but not every one. C) Companions with requirements. It's wonderful when an NPC is picky about who they team up with. An evil character who won't team up with a paladin. A paladin who will only team up with a cleric of the same faith. A guy who will only team up with you if you complete a quest in a certain (ideally non-optimum) way. D) Mutually exclusive companions. This is a big one. Again, in Dragon Age or Mass Effect, you can't help but "catch 'em all". Characters who hate each other, a thief who won't team up with a rival thief, a halfling with a fear of half-orcs (or vice versa), and of course people with interesting story or quest-related reasons not to work together. This also includes characters who will leave you if you make certain decisions, and others who will stay with you only if you make certain decisions. See the first couple of Jagged Alliance games to observe how beautifully this can be done. (I really enjoyed hiring a "snitch" character who would spy on the rest of the team and report on any friction. Best of all was waking up one morning to find a character simply gone ... another squad member had murdered him in the night and disposed of the body without a trace. I assume. I never proved it.) These are all ways to let the player see several different party configurations throughout the course of a playthrough, without resorting to "Oh, I want to hire this guy now, so I guess I'll fire you." They also help with replay value.

Not gonna lie - I enjoy Frazetta style fantasy babes. I don't have any problem with realistic armor, but I do think it's cool to see the occasional shirtless hero or slinky sorceress. Having every inch of skin for both genders hidden beneath five layers of steel and leather may be "realistic", but it's visually very boring. Realistic is fine for some things. I prefer artistic.