Sensuki

I asked some questions about Talents and Enemy AI (among other things) in an interview I sent off a week or so ago. ETA was "a couple of weeks", so I might get it back next week.

Attributes, Gear and Talents (and spell selection for caster classes). We are not sure if there's any choice of abilities for classes yet. The Fighter has 15 abilities listed on the wiki, but it's only possible to have 14 total as a level 12 character ....

The art style falls within "BG1/IWD1 hybrid look with 'natural' color palette, mix of fine and loose brush strokes and shoulders up proportions" category, but other than that I really don't see any similarlities between Kaz' work on Eder and this potrait. The linework, brushwork and texturing is just completely different (in my opinion). There's some similarities to how Polina does darker pencil style shadings to resemble shadowing, but her outlines of the character are very soft, whereas Polina's are very sharp. Kaz's outline of characters are very "ethereal" or ghostlike as there's no one clear outline, there's like a few overlapping ones.

Pretty sure you can buy more active abilities via the Talent system.

Depending on the final tally of companions, I'm gonna pseudo-randomly choose a race and class, and then just use companions.

I thought that was cut. I hope it was anyway.

It's *nothing* like the Eder portrait for me. Not even remotely the same xD

As of December 2013 (when the PE Trailer interview went up) everyone was fair game. This may have changed since then I'm not sure

How? I thought Scooby Doo was awesome when I was a kid, I tried to watch it again as a teenager and recognized it's many flaws. The same happened for BG2's romance writing. I remember loving the romances as a 13 year old, but as an adult, I think they're pretty lame. I agree, it's sad isn't it.

BG2 is one of the best RPGs I have ever played as well, but the romance writing was very juvenile and it was a PG 13 game. The gameplay however is fantastic and the main story is very good.

I think you're missing my point? e: fair enough I don't really think there's a specific con to PE for me. There's stuff I'm concerned about (whether the fill-in art for the UI will look good, whether the controls/interfaces etc etc will feel the same, spell FX direction) but for the most part it seems to be pretty on the money as a spiritual successor to the IE games.

I never liked Jaheira (or Anomen) as a character in BG2, but I liked the Aerie and Viconia romances when I was 13. YMMV. I liked Scooby Doo the cartoon as a kid as well. Going back and trying to watch an episode as an adult did_not_work and I wish I never did it xD. The only cartoon that is still as good today as it was when I watched as a kid were the first five episodes of Gargoyles. After that the show is a terrible episodic, but the first five episodes are still awesome.

Did you like them when you were 12 years old ? BG2 was written for teenagers.

The leveling rate in BG1 was fine for all classes except the Ranger and Paladin. The Mage started speeding up towards the end. A level for the Thief was less of a big deal than it was for other classes. Yeah, weird system but it worked for the post part.

This is more of a design issue. There's two ways around this. #1 - Don't spawn the monsters until you've received the quest. #2 - Script the quest so that you will get the XP reward regardless of whether you killed the monsters before or after getting the quest.

Possibly, yes.

Paladins can also be ranged leaders, and don't necessarily have any abilities that help them tank damage. It's pretty much "Tank": Fighter, Monk, Barbarian "DPS": Rogue, Ranger, Cipher "Controller": Wizard, Druid "Support": Paladin, Chanter, Priest All classes seem very distinct which is good.

I've been saying for a while that the final amount is likely up in the air, In the RPGCodex interview. Carrie Patel said she would be working on at least one, but possibly two companions. Plus there's a bunch of other "hints" that there may be more than 8 depending on how the writers go. They have five companion writers that we know about: Eric, Chris, Josh, Carrie and Matt McLean. If Chris, Matt and Carrie provide two each that's six. Josh is writing at least one. and Eric is probably doing at least two. That's nine. And maybe Josh does two and Eric does three (if there's time), making 11

Not neccessarily..... When I said that I meant across the board rather than specific to the Fighter itself.

I don't think Strength Might will necessarily be the best attribute for Fighters. CON and perhaps DEX look to be more important. Even PER might be pretty good as interrupts theoretically reduce enemy DPS. I don't think there's supposed to be any wrong stats. One (big) mistake might be not having a very good Dexterity though. Apparently even a high Perception Priest is supposed to be "cool", as you can theoretically use the same few damaging spells over and over again.

The Fighter's, Barbarian's and Rogue's abilities are all mundane, but you can buy optional magical talents. Your concern there is the very reason why they've been designed that way. Pretty sure "animancy" will be like the main theme of the game if not one of them. Obsidian's writing is generally their strong point. Pretty much the same as what you'd be doing in something like Baldur's Gate 2 ? Walking around talking to people, doing quests, exploring environments and combat. Nope. Everything will have keyboard shortcuts, and the UI looks like this:

Well look at the bright side you'll get to play up to six of them at a time, even if you didn't make the character yourself

Is that a change from minus Accuracy? or do shields also slow down your recovery time as well as heavier ones reducing accuracy?

The portrait was done by an artist we hired and not by our in-house team. There you go. Thanks

Is it just me or does that portrait seem a bit inconsistent with the other ones? Kaz Polina New one Polina has a lot bolder outlining and sort of a "pencilly" look to some parts, Kaz has more of a painterly look. The new one has really soft outlining and is kind of "blurry" in the hair and the armor/cape (although that might partly be the jpeg compression). Looks like a different artist, although the darker lines on the cape and chin look a bit like Polina's "style". Interesting anyway.